This past February was ‘Mobility & Transportation’ month in my ‘English Time’ classrooms at the bilingual Polish-English school where I currently work with grades 1-3.
We spent a considerable amount of time talking about transportation, looking at different public transportation modes, and of course also talking about ‘softer’ modes of mobility. I adore the art that 1st graders created to depict these modes (a couple of examples below)!
It should come as no surprise that I could easily create several months of learning and creative activities related to this theme. I really enjoy the Teletubbies ‘My Dad’s a Tram Driver’ episode, with very down-to-earth, relaxing, and engaging clips of a young girl boarding and riding a tram that her dad drives, with her mom. The kids may have never had a teacher so thrilled to show them a video about a tram!
‘Mobility’ is one of the core modules in the ‘Sustainable Urbanism & Planetary Health’ curriculum I am developing at Pedestrian Space, indeed, with the express purpose of a whole learning module with age-appropriate educational and creative activities designed for students to explore the topic of mobility.
The curriculum is designed with older students having a community-immersed experience with self-directed and group projects or internships, and younger students having more of a mix of a creative and learning adventure at their school homebase, with community immersion via project field trips.
Later this year, I’ll be piloting the Pedestrian Space ‘Sustainable Urbanism & Planetary Health’ curriculum.
One of my pilot partners is a school for youth on the autism spectrum, and we’ve decided together to choose the ‘Mobility’ module for the pilot, focusing in particular on ‘Public Transportation’, a topic that many of them are also passionate about.
I’m excited to pilot a ‘Public Transportation’ mobility module for this group of students, exploring existing options in the city, but also learning about public transportation in other cities.
In my current classes with primary school students, during February and the ‘Mobility & Transportation’ theme, I showed them diverse public transport modes. They were completely wowed by images of suspended rail and also intrigued that in some other places, ferries are part of the public transport system.
This particular pilot is additionally meaningful to me as I know many of these students will grow up not able to drive and thus also dependent on walkable and bikeable community spaces and convenient, affordable and accessible public transportation systems. Shaping awareness and appreciation for more sustainable modes of mobility from a young age is part of a sustainable urbanism paradigm shift.👏🏽
~Annika
