This week, students in Mrs. Evdokimoff’s Gr. 5/6 class learned about sustainable decision making in a rousing game of "Fishing for Sustainability". Sustainability is all about fulfilling our needs without impacting the ability of future generations to do the same. In this game, groups (or ‘Villages’) had to make careful decisions of how many fish they wanted to take from their lake every week to feed their village and sell for income to buy supplies. The six different Villages took a wide range of strategies and by the end of the game, some Villages had eaten well and made lots of money, but had all but completely depleted their fish population. Others were careful to keep their fish population steady, but ended up running out of money for supplies. The one thing that held true for all of the Villages was that they each wound up taking more than they really needed (the minimum number of fish/week they had been told they needed to survive at the start of the game). We had a group discussion about WHY we might choose to take more than we need both in the game and also in our own everyday lives. This led to a discussion about needs vs wants and finding a sustainable balance.
