Today I survived a Zombie Apocalypse!
Don’t believe me?
Here’s photo evidence…
Ok, so maybe it wasn’t a real Zombie attack – but it had all the elements.
It was an educational exercise run by Dr Matthew Finch and it was awesome.
Starting at the school, the students of Tullamore Central School did not know what they were getting into as they walked down to the library.
What we found when we arrived was blood stains, chalk warnings and a vandalised library!
And then the zombies came!
Awesome family members and volunteers who had dressed up and spent the day threatening us survivors holed up in the library.
It was up to the students to come up with a survival plan, leave notes for future survivors and then try come up with a way to get back to the safe zone of the school without being infected.
Want to hear how it all went down and find out how we survived? Have a listen to the radio package I put together for ABC Local Radio.
What was this all in aid of I hear you asking!
Well the kids learnt how to use resources in the library, they worked together as teams and thought about what they could use in their everyday lives to keep them alive in an extreme situation.
Some kids drew on experiences of being resourceful on farms, others about having been involved in flood or fire emergencies but most of all we had fun!
The students played along and from observing them, they seemed to have had a great time.
It is an incredible educational tool.
While every day in the classroom cannot be this hands on and dramatic, there is no reason we can’t make learning a little fun.
Both my parents are teachers, and fabulous teachers at that, and I’ve seen them doing smaller scale exercises like this.
My Dad making up songs about Sin, Tan and Cos and my Mum putting together lesson plans about pollution that involved trips to the roadside to see rubbish and little mini experiments.
While the kids writing today was a little scattered I am sure, thanks to Matt, that they have taken so much away.
And the message isn’t really about Zombies (sad I know) it’s about thinking logically in an emergency, using resources and working together.
After today I am filled with such hope about the future.
Seeing these fabulous kids enter this strange scenario with so much trust, and want to succeed was fabulous, but more importantly it inspired me to re consider a career in education.
Maybe not right now, and maybe not in the traditional teaching way – but I’ll find my niche, or I want and I’ve been so lucky to experience such a wonderful day and meet some amazing people.
Young people are often written off as being careless, insensitive and lazy – I am here to tell you people they are incredible, intelligent and just waiting to prove you all wrong!
Reblogged this on Books and Adventures and commented:
A personal response to the zombie workshop which I ran today at Tullamore Library, New South Wales. Stay tuned for more reports from the “Zombpocalypse”…
I saw this on the ABC Central West facebook page. What fun!
What a terrific exercise Matt. I really enjoyed listening to the audio of it that Janice sent me. You should post it on your site. I can’t believe the school library is only opened once a week; these kids deserve more. Hopefully you can inspire and organize the community to demand more for their children.
We just experienced a real near apocalypse here in New York with hurricane Sandy. Our local high school library here in Croton-on-Hudson became a real place of refuge after the storm for students who needed a warm place to study, to charge electronic devices, or just a place with light to read. The library also streamed live video for those who wanted to watch election night coverage.
We were fortunate to live in a community that was able to get it school infrastructure back in working order and sees its school as not just a place of physical refuge, but also of intellectual refuge.
There were other communities who experienced truly apocalyptic devastation, and are far from recovery. The vulnerable Far Rockaway and Red Hook communities in particular come to mind. See links below:
http://gothamschools.org/2012/11/08/students-in-rockaway-schools-go-elsewhere-or-nowhere-at-all/
http://gothamschools.org/2012/11/06/red-hook-principals-scramble-to-find-space-for-damaged-school/
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2012/nov/09/residents-public-housing-red-hook-complain-sub-standard-conditions/
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