On the first day of our new academic year, we were taken to a beach nearby our school. Our main aim was to go there, have a look and just think about the amount of garbage thrown on the beach. We took garbage bags with us. We were divided into groups and then we went around the beach and picked up chunks of garbage. We tried our best to get as much as possible. It made us realize the amount of garbage thrown by people in public areas. Not only that, we also experienced being in the shoes of the garbage cleaners and how they feel when they have to do this for the entire day and base their living on this.
The learning outcomes that I fulfilled are:
LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process:
While doing this activity, we underwent a lot of challenges. Picking up garbage is not something that we do on a daily basis. Our reaction on picking up the garbage was not very open-minded. This was mainly because of the different way we were brought up and that we haven’t done anything like this before. However, once we started this activity we were getting along the surrounding. We were soon okay and we overcame a challenge that we faced initially. We did not develop a major skill in this process however we did enhance teamwork skills as that was one of the ways we were able to complete it quickly. We worked together in a team and picked up as much garbage as possible.
LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively:
For this activity, we had to work in groups. To start off with, we did have some problems because we weren’t coordinating well and it led to a lot of time to complete this activity. People did not accept each other’s decisions which caused a few conflicts. But then we decided to pause for some time and decided who was going to cover which area of the beach. Soon it all started to come together for us as we started coordinating nicely. We were able to successfully complete this activity quickly.
LO 6: Demonstrate Engagement with issues of global significance:
This activity was related to a social cause. It helped the society what we did. This issue is engaged with the issue of global significance because this has become a global issue. People throwing garbage and polluting the streets and cities is something that is very commonly seen these days. Despite all the posters and other advertising campaigns that are set up for anti-pollution, people are still throwing garbage on the streets from moving cars. By doing this activity I, personally, got to know about this issue. By cleaning the beach I realized that throwing the garbage is pretty easy but cleaning it up is very difficult. This lead to me being aware and not throwing garbage on the streets because now every time I open my window to throw something out of the car, I think about cleaning the beach.
LO 7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions:
Our main aim in this activity was to influence the people around us by collecting garbage thrown on the beach. We had to be ethical in what we did to make sure we influenced them. We had to identify what was right and what wasn’t while we executed this activity. Some of our choices had to be made keeping in mind the ethics of that choice. While picking up the garbage we had to make sure we were doing it enthusiastically and that we were not leaving a false impression on the people around. We had to ethically pick up all the garbage using gloves for our safety and a black garbage bag to dispose of all the waste in. More importantly, we had to make sure we ourselves were not littering anything on the beach because that would have created a false impression and our entire aim would have been unsuccessful. We had to make sure what we were doing was ethical by making the right decisions and putting ourselves into the shoes of the cleaners who do this on a daily basis. Only if we were able to get ourselves in that perspective, we could have executed this activity with enthusiasm and created an impact on others.
After this activity, I learnt a few things from it. It was a great experience overall and we did achieve what we aimed for. We were able to inspire the people witnessing the event. People watching us doing this deed made them feel guilty about throwing the garbage in such public places. I worked with enthusiasm to make sure I cater to most of the learning outcomes and make this a successful activity. All in all, it was a great learning experience.
