Art teacher gives students lessons on eco-friendly living

Involving over 2,000 students in eco-friendly activities is not an easy task but the passion for art and keeping the Earth green helped art teacher Rashida Adil to do so. Rashida has been teaching art to Grade 8 students (boys) of Sharjah Indian School, Juwaiza, for several years now.
Since her birthday comes a week before World Environment Day, she decided to launch a YouTube channel on her birthday where she has started uploading videos on how to make eco-friendly products at home using recycled material.
"I believe in leading by example and therefore I take my own videos with my mobile where I show children how to make meaningful, eco-friendly art and craft things. Since I have only one class per week with different sections, I send these videos to my students, who find it easy to follow it this way," Rashida said.
"With the fear of Covid-19 looming large, I decided to start by teaching children how to make paper soaps as they would be required to wash hands every now and then to avoid getting the virus. Carrying sanitisers is not very convenient for children as it may spill over in their bags and cause inconvenience. But paper soap was something that is very easy to make and also its concept fascinated the children."
Rashida taught around 1,700 children from Grade 6-9 to make paper soaps that they made with butter paper and stapled together in different shapes. For the rest of the art students, she assigned making cloth bags and face masks using old T-shirts.
"While the elder students made paper soaps using butter paper and liquid soaps that are easily available at home, Grade 4-5 students were taught how to make paper bags that can be placed inside trash bins and the younger ones from Grade 1-3 made paper aquariums using recycled cardboard, magazine and newspapers as it is World Oceans Day on June 7. All the art activities this year were done in an eco-friendly way," Rashida said.
On World Environment Day on Friday, around 100 students from the school's environment club will have a video call with Rashida where they will display their eco-friendly art creations and take a pledge to take care of their environment by reducing or avoiding usage of plastic.


saman@khaleejtimes.com