My Green School
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people and wave to them from the playground. Teachers also spoke about the significance of the ‘openness’ of the school. In comparison to the old school where we used to be, it was very much sort of brick walls all the way around it and you know, sort of the only thing that you could see was sort of through the gates and it was just the road ... it was very sort of enclosed and you didn’t feel like you were necessarily part of anywhere other than the school ... And I think you know, sort of being here and it being much more open, you do feel like you’re part of something else (Teacher, Year 5). Children’s interest in green spaces also seems to facilitate connections between school, home and beyond. They often made references to gardening activities with their parents or carers. Many felt that they could learn much from their parents about tending to plants. For example, one girl explained that her mum had said that ‘if you cut [a stem] ... a little bit, like, a half of the stem it might grow another one out, that’s what my mum said’. Another boy explained that his ‘cousin actually had a toilet and he put plants inside and the plants seeds came off and they were so big. It was so cool, like a tornado and the plants like act as tornados’. Other children made comparisons between the spaces in their school and the spaces they saw on a school-trip to Liverpool: 'there was hardly any countryside’ one boy said. It seems that their experiences of the green spaces in their school frame how they perceive other spaces. In addition, the green spaces are an opportunity for children to speak to teachers about their lives beyond school. For example, one of the Year 5 teachers brought into the school a cutting from her honeysuckle. This was planted near the school entrance and has been growing very well. Two girls on a school tour pointed out the honeysuckle and explained that their teacher had planted it. They said that they had spoken to their teacher about it just a few days before our tour and she had told them it was a very sweet smelling plant. The two girls said that was probably why it was called honeysuckle, ‘because honey is very sweet’. It seems that the children are making connections between their school’s green spaces and those they have experienced at home and beyond. The children’s accounts of helping their parents with their gardening or visiting other green spaces are at odds with the view that children do not have access to green spaces within their everyday lives. However, the children’s engagements with green spaces beyond school, which the children seem eager to share, could offer interesting opportunities to consider issues around sustainability within lessons.