Peace Corp Volunteer in Tonga
Environmental Lesson

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Feeling overwhelmed hasn’t done much help for my planning. Luckily here in Peace corps Tonga we are a family and Jesse set a day as Peace Corps Tonga Environmental day. So I decided to do something. Trash pick up came to mind as the most accessible when dealing with a group of primary school students. Still I needed something more, different. What do I have, know, do that the other teachers don’t? So I choose to make it a recycling awareness lesson. There was supposed to be some trash pick up lesson with the school, or someone as this is a special week, or day or something. I don’t really understand why, but that is part of living in a different culture. After inquiring about when this will be I find out they are not picking up trash, just talking to the kids this afternoon. So I pulled together a plan and we split the kids into groups and hit the road. We all walked down the main road the whole length of town. This in itself is an interesting thing when compared to the states. It took about an hour to walk down and back and pick up trash, not a huge town. The whole time we only had to move to the side for a car 3 times. That makes being responsible for 65 children on the main road that much easier.

I think the trash pick up went well and we did end up with a big pile of trash. Now the recycling part. We divided into groups, each had something they were looking for. First we dumped out the bags 1 or 2 at a time. Then the recyclers came in and picked out the cans and separated them into drink and food cans. Then we took the rest of the trash and put it back in the bags. This was a process but it worked as each kid knew their responsibility. Now we have 3 piles, 1 trash, 1 drink cans and 1 food cans. Then in groups the students went to wash their hands! Very important as they will all be eating soon. At this point I checked the time and we had two minutes until lunch. Wow what a success. Then Lopa, my principal turns to me and said “this is a good lesson because the students learn what is recyclable and we (the teachers) learn at the same time” yes recognized success! I walked to the recycling cages with some of the students. Of coarse knowing me I saw a few cans along the way so I picked them up. The students saw this and they were on the search again. They even saw a burn pile with many cans in it, more than I was going to ask them to deal with. They didn’t agree and the picked all the recyclable cans out unprompted. This truly is what the Peace Corps is all about.

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