How can fish-eating education break through? Yueming Elementary School extends from the dining table to ocean education
In the past, ocean education came from family and daily life, but most parents today do not have the ability to teach ocean knowledge, and today's fishery production methods are more complex than before and farther removed from urban life. Many consumers find eating fish difficult, and the dining table has unexpectedly become the most unfamiliar distance between people and the sea.
Starting last year, we collaborated with Yueming Elementary School on the "Fish-Eating Education Goes to Campus" program, exploring new sea routes in fish-eating education like a great voyage. After seven months of promotion, the journey was full of challenges yet always ended in surprises, and we gained a great deal and received much positive feedback.
The biggest problem at the start was teaching students how to find the bones in fish meat and avoid getting pricked by fish bones. We also taught the children the most basic knowledge about fish structure and appearance. After 6 rounds of super-intensive learning, these children from grades 1 to 6 were no longer stumped by ordinary fish bones, shrimp or crab; a 4th-grade child was even invited to the sustainable New Year's Eve dinner event organized by the Taiwan Museum to teach adults and children on site how to pick the bones out of mackerel and eat mackerel safely.
With initial confidence gained, Yueming Elementary School launched the second phase of fish-eating education, continuing with 9 new fish species at a pace of one species every 2 weeks. In addition, not only the homeroom teachers of each class but all the teachers in the school devoted themselves to fish-eating education, and the results were even more stunning!
Yueming's fish-eating education extends from the dining table to all-round learning
• Understanding the appearance of organisms - body shape, body color, size, sex, name, species, live observation, touching, ...
• Understanding the physiology of organisms - growth, reproduction, swimming posture, feeding habits...
• Ecology - habitat, food chain, migration...
• Resources - changes in quantity, current resource status...
• Production methods - farming methods, fishing methods, origin visits, on-site practice...
• Management methods - fisheries management
• Sales methods - market visits
• Cooking methods - filleting, cooking... hands-on practice
• Eating methods - weekly experience
• Music - learning to sing fish songs from home and abroad
• Arts and crafts - watercolor, ink painting, clay,
• Literature - Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, zhuyin
• Games - various indoor and outdoor games replacing exams
These teaching methods were all prepared through collaborative lesson planning by the school's teachers, each one more exciting than the last. When the flying fish had its flying fish song, every fish had to find a song; if one couldn't be found, then write one! After the flying fish first appeared in the classroom, everyone looked forward to the next fish to appear in every class!
How do you deal with children's fear of being pricked by fish bones?
Over the course of more than 20 fish-eating sessions, everyone may be eager to know: were any children pricked by fish bones? Since it was anticipated beforehand that a child might get pricked, the school also prepared a response plan, and it was actually needed twice.
Once, a 1st-grade little girl had also been pricked while eating fish at home the day before, so she already had fear in her heart when eating a whole bamboo mackerel, and that day she really did get pricked by a fish bone. So the school, following the method agreed upon in advance with the parents, had the teacher take the student to seek medical care to remove the bone and notified the parents. After the bone was removed, the little girl was still fearful of fish bones; it was truly worrying that she might retain a long-lasting shadow over eating fish!
Later, when eating a whole white-tailed seabream, the teacher specially accompanied this little girl to face the obstacle of picking out fish bones together, encouraging her to start eating from the tail, which has fewer bones, because this was a very tasty fish! In the end, with the teacher's encouragement, the little girl not only ate the tail but finished the entire fish, because she thought the fish was just too delicious!
A fish that is too tasty can also bring trouble. A girl in the middle grades thought the flying fish was so delicious that she ate all by herself the flying fish of 2 classmates who were absent that day! As a result, because she ate too fast she swallowed a fish bone and became the second student to report to the hospital. Eating fish is like riding a bicycle: learning on your own makes it easy to fall, but with an adult accompanying you the risk is much smaller; yet once you know how, you still need to practice often. Once you truly know how, you will never forget it for a lifetime, but even the most skilled rider will still fall if careless.
Shuangchun Elementary School children have all been pricked by fish bones, yet milkfish is still their favorite
I also want to share an experience at another elementary school. Shuangchun Elementary School in Tainan is a rural elementary school with only 20 students. During the summer vacation we also went to teach the students a marine class. I was curious and asked the children in this aquaculture area, which specializes in farming milkfish, Taiwan tilapia and clams, whether they could eat a whole milkfish by themselves.
All the students in the school raised their hands and said: Yes. Then I asked everyone who had been pricked by a fish bone while eating milkfish. All the students in the school raised their hands to say they had been pricked! Finally I asked what fish they thought was the most delicious. The answer from all of them was: milkfish! From this case I became even more convinced how important it is to teach children to eat Taiwan's food!
"As long as teachers are not afraid, fish bones cannot block fish-eating education"
From the 15 lessons at Yueming Elementary School, the principles for carrying out education can be summarized:
(1) From near to far - choose common local species so that the children still cannot get away from fish even after leaving campus
(2) From simple to difficult - picking out fish bones requires gradual learning, starting progressively from simply peeling shrimp shells
(3) Correct knowledge as the foundation - all course content must be evidence-based, rigorously verified, and if you do not know something, say you do not know; never overgeneralize or pass on incorrect knowledge
(4) All-round learning - seeing, listening, touching, tasting, thinking, writing, drawing, moving...
(5) Start from a young age - give appropriate and different teaching methods for different ages, with different learning from grade one to grade six
(6) Good fish, eat slowly - give students enough time to pick out bones and savor, cultivating the joy of tasting food
(7) Form habits - not just in class, eat seafood every week, and give the best seafood the most devoted cooking, to form the habit of eating seafood
A curriculum built with such care is not only for the fortunate students of Yueming, but should also be shared with teachers and students across all of Taiwan! This summer vacation the teachers of Yueming were not idle either; we are preparing 15 fish-eating education experiences for the lower, middle and upper grades, organizing them to share with schools nationwide! There are also many NGO friends who want to help promote it together. Almost all parents approve of the school teaching fish-eating education, and many schools are very curious and interested, but unfortunately most principals are still blocked by a tiny fish bone!
The unknown is the greatest fear. When students do not know where the fish bones are, fear arises and they miss the chance to eat fish; because schools do not know how to teach it, they cannot carry out fish-eating education. But in Yueming's experience, we have proven that this can be taught and learned! To borrow a sentence from Principal Huang of Yueming Elementary School to share with all schools: "As long as teachers are not afraid, fish bones cannot block fish-eating education"!
Correct fish-eating education cultivates future ocean citizens
These seven months of "Fish-Eating Education Goes to Campus" brought us many valuable insights. Why is it so important to carry out fish-eating education on campus? We have summarized the 7 major importances of fish-eating education and hope to share them with everyone:
(1) Enhance understanding of and concern for the environment: Fish-eating education is part of food education, but wild-caught seafood is the only crop in today's commercialized food production that is not planned and produced by humans. Therefore, when eating seafood, more understanding of the environment and ecology needs to be added, thereby inspiring concern.
(2) Cultivate the habit of consuming local fish products: As with all food education, the cultivation of taste starts from a young age, and the diverse textures of seafood require even more time to develop into bodily memory.
(3) Support local agriculture and safeguard food security: Local production for local sales is not a new slogan, but the main supply and marketing model of agriculture. Local production must be supported by local sales, and local sales must be supplied by local production; this is the most effective strategy for safeguarding food security.
(4) Safeguard consumers' health: It is well known that seafood has many nutrients that land foods lack. If consumers do not understand fish, they cannot eat seafood correctly, and not only will they fail to get the precious nutrients from the ocean, they may also accidentally eat bad seafood and cause harm to their health.
(5) Protect consumers' rights and interests: When consumers face a bewildering variety of seafood, if they lack correct knowledge they may very likely make the wrong choices, spending money and still ending up upset!
(6) Promote effective fisheries management: The purpose of fishery production is to supply consumers, including food supply and the creation of economic value, so consumer demand is an important guide for production. As Taiwan gradually builds an effective fisheries management system, consumers provide important pull.
(7) Help the sustainable use of the ocean: Responsible producers provide healthy supply, and fish-savvy consumers provide healthy demand, and whether producers or consumers, both need good ocean literacy. Fish-eating education is precisely the most solid way to provide consumers with good ocean literacy!