Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

30 minutes – Part A: Priorities
30 minutes – Part B: Problems
30 minutes – Part C: Potential
10 minutes – Reflection

Talking about bushfires often involves addressing sensitive issues. Bushfires are innately linked to death and dying, and as such, may evoke strong emotions, opinions, or raise challenging questions about values and beliefs that have no easy answers.

Please review the Handling Sensitive Topics and Issues factsheet for information on how to create a safe environment for your students and monitor all students during and after conducting this lesson. If you're aware of any students who may struggle with this content, chat with their parents or caregivers about a strategy for this child prior to the lesson.

Part A: Priorities

Step 1.

Gathered below and in the design document are some comments from people involved in building in bushfire-prone areas. Their purpose is to prompt students to think about the challenges people experience when trying to recover from a bushfire, allowing students to more deeply understand the problems posed by a bushfire. When the problems are explained in detail and with clarity, the solutions students create in the coming phases will be highly focused and therefore more likely to be effective and impactful.

Students can read through these accounts independently.

Provisions for Learning Support: Read through these accounts as a whole class, allowing time for students to share their thoughts and reflections.

Ian Brownrigg was the Country Fire Authority (CFA) captain on hand when bushfires surrounded the Clifton Creek Primary School in East Gippsland on 30 December 2019.

Mr Brownrigg was involved in making the decision that the school could not be saved.

"If we were to have defended the school it would have been the only asset in the community, all the private houses would have been at risk, more than they even were and it just become the very difficult decision that it was undefendable," he said.

Mr Brownrigg said the school had not been well maintained for fire season.

"It has had no preparation, it had large multiple buildings, pine bark, wood chips all that sort of vegetation that was hard to manage," he said.

Mr Brownrigg said a sprinkler system that had been at the school had been disconnected and while the school had a good plan to get children out of the area in the event of a bushfire, there wasn't a plan to protect buildings.

He said with climate change and a rise in major bushfires, the ability of firefighters to defend any future school needed to be considered.

"What are we going to do to protect it in the future? That is really the issue," he said.

"We couldn't defend it here the other night, so can we defend it in the future?"

(Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/bushfire-destroys-clifton-creek-primary-school-gippsland/11860490)

"Clifton Creek Primary School is not only a school but a community asset. Schools are often at the heart of their local community and used in a variety of ways and that is why I want residents to know we are prepared to rebuild the school."

– Victorian Minister for Education James Merlino

(Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/bushfire-destroys-clifton-creek-primary-school-gippsland/11860490)

“[…] child care centres, preschools, schools and universities are important community touchpoints that are helping families and children get back on their feet after the bushfires.”

– Australian Minister for Education Dan Tehan

(Source: https://theconversation.com/a-familiar-place-among-the-chaos-how-schools-can-help-students-cope-after-the-bushfires-129904)

Step 2.

Facilitate a discussion. These questions can also be found and responded to in the design document.

Do students consider your school the “heart of their local community”? What makes it an important place for people?
Schools can provide a sense of familiarity, routine and security for kids amon the chaos of a bushfire. Even when a school has been affected by fire, it is imperative that it still feels like a learning environment and has books, desks, classes, breaks and safe environments for children to learn and play.
Are there any important Indigenous sites within your local community? What do you know about what makes them important?
This might be a good opportunity to get in touch with some of your local elders and possibly conduct a walking tour of the area to learn more about their perspective on fire and how their community connects to land.
Are there other important places within your local community?
Some might be considered important because of their utility, such as hospitals or supermarkets. Some might be important due to the way they act as a community hub, such as the local football ground or community arts centre. The local pub can also be an important meeting place for adults. Some places might have significance to the local community, such as statues, murals or creative spaces. A home can also be a very important space for people to congregate and enjoy memories.

Step 3.

Independently, using the design document, students create a list of important local places.

Provisions for Learning Support: Students could work in small groups for this task. Consider splitting students into groups with more confident leaders who can guide their peers through the exercise.

Step 4.

Next ask students to imagine they are the local CFA captain like Mr Brownrigg.

Mr Brownrigg had to make a choice about where his firefighting resources were deployed. He made the difficult decision that it was going to be too hard to save the school due to its vulnerable design. The woodchips around the grounds and the lack of a sprinkler system made it a very flammable building. Instead he chose to defend people’s homes.

Ask students to rank their list of places in order of significance as if they were being prioritised for defending in the event of a bushfire. Students create a top-five list of important places with a short justification for why these places should be saved over all others.

Remind students that communities will need places to gather around in the immediate and long-term aftermath of a fire. Students need to consider the value, utility and spiritual significance these places represent and what impact it might have on people if these places were lost.

Step 5.

Invite students to share their ideas and reasoning with the class.

Students can make adjustments to their lists if they feel inspired.

Part B: Problems

Step 1.

Consider these comments from Simon Anderson, a structural civil engineer working with people who are building in bushfire-prone areas.

"What's the design solution? We all live in houses like kilns? You could build a reinforced concrete box and use oven glass as the windows. When the fire comes you can watch it go by and be safe and the building will be safe, except it will be black. But for the other 99 times out of 100 where you're not going to have a fire, you're going to have this beastly looking thing that's not much fun to live in."

(Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-22/bushfire-bunker-fireproofing-houses/11885578)

Step 2.

Facilitate a discussion. These questions can also be found in the design document.

How do students feel about living in a 'beautiful' home that has the potential to be completely destroyed by a bushfire?
Would students be willing to trade the beauty of a house for added survivability during a bushfire event?
How would students feel living most of the time in a “beastly looking... reinforced concrete box”? Do they think this would have an impact on their mood?
Is it ethical to continue to build less sustainable and fire-resistant buildings in bushfire-prone areas? Such buildings, like Clifton Creek Primary School, add fuel to passing fires, threatening the lives of people who might be trapped inside them and the firefighters sent to rescue them, and continue to cause livability issues for many months after bushfire events as the families have nowhere to continue on with their lives.

Step 3.

Independently or in small groups, using the design document, students create a set of criteria that determines the livability of a place.

What do students need in their home and local community to live comfortably?

Suggestions might include:

Basic amenities and day-to-day necessities: Water for drinking and bathing, power for heating and cooking, somewhere comfortable to sleep, a kitchen table – these are things that are necessary for survival.
Community amenities: A hospital or a school.
Creature comforts: A home computer, the local movie theatre, restaurants and cafes – these are things that make life a little more enjoyable.

Students also consider the following questions:

How important is it for you to live somewhere close to nature? Why/why not?
How important is it for you to live close to other people (outside of your family)? Why/why not?
How important is it for you to live somewhere 'beautiful'? Why/why not?

Provisions for Learning Support: Come up with a list of livability criteria together as a class. Ask students to record each criterion in their own individual design Ddcument, then rate these criteria out of ten on a personal level.

Step 4.

Invite students to share their ideas and reasoning with the class.

Students can make adjustments to their lists if they feel inspired.

Highlight to students that the problem posed by bushfires is an incredibly complex issue with many facets. The answers aren't always simple, and furthermore, while some solutions might seem obvious, they come with their own set of challenges, as Mr Anderson's comments raise.

Part C: Potential

Step 1.

Start by challenging students with the question, “What is the main problem that bushfires cause?”. You might write this question somewhere prominent on the board.

Step 2.

Allow students some time to turn and talk with one another. Then reconvene as a class to discuss the question.

Step 3.

Guide students through focusing their thinking into a workable problem statement by challenging them with, "Why?" in response to their answers to the question.

For example:

Problem: The main problem that bushfires cause is that they burn down houses.

Why? Usually because the roof catches fire during a bushfire.

Why? Because they are made of flammable materials.

Why? Because these materials are inexpensive and/or easy to build with.

When you have followed one line of inquiry to its deepest conclusion, return to the question of the main problem and explore some different issues that bushfires cause.

Provisions for Learning Support: Refer students back to the empathise phase of their design document. What were some of the most challenging aspects of experiencing a bushfire that students read about people experiencing?

Step 4.

Guide students towards creating some problem statements. Remember that useful problem statements are both narrow enough to be manageable by focusing on just one of the aspects of the impacts of bushfires that students identified in Step 3 so that it’s not too daunting or difficult to know where to go next and yet also broad enough for creative freedom so that there is not one obvious solution and students are inspired to think up a lot of different possible fixes.

Suggested problem statements might include;

How can I stop a bushfire front getting close to a house?
How can I build with fire-resistant materials?
How can I build in a shape that doesn't catch embers falling from the sky?
How can I put out a fire if it catches on a house?
How can I ensure access to water during a bushfire?
How can I stay safe while fighting a bushfire?
How can I evacuate a house safely if it is caught in a bushfire?
How can belongings in a house be saved from burning during a bushfire?

Students record these problem statements in their design document.

Reflection

Ask students to reflect on how their thinking has changed over the course of the lesson. They can use the design document to record their responses to the following questions:

At the start of the lesson what did you think would be the major impact of bushfires?
How has your thinking changed? List some indirect ways bushfires impact communities and the way people live.

Where to next?

Students have developed an understanding that the problem of bushfire-resistant housing is far more complex than simply finding ways to stop a building from burning down. They have explored the many and varied impacts of bushfires and considered some of the parallel challenges of livability standards in bushfire-prone areas. Students have narrowly defined the challenges they believe need to be addressed in clarifying some problem statements. In the next phase students will investigate potential solutions and current thinking on these issues in order to deeply understand what can currently be done to address these challenges and how best to implement these potential solutions as well as potential limitations to these solutions.

Teacher Reflection

It can be challenging to try a different teaching methodology, but it is a great way to further develop your practice.

In the design process model the instructor's task is to challenge students' preconceived ideas, foster their curiosity, pose challenging questions and provide support and guidance to students as they are self-directed in pursuing knowledge. This can potentially be difficult for students who are more familiar with the traditional role in learning of instructors as the main disseminator of information.

Take a moment to reflect on your practice by answering one or two of the following questions.

Did students appear confident in approaching the tasks of this lesson? If so, what's one thing you think you did that was effective in supporting them? If not, what's one thing you could do to better support them in the future?
What's something new or interesting or that you liked about this lesson? Why?
What's one aspect of this lesson that you found challenging to teach? Why?
What's one area of your practice that you felt these lessons helped you develop or practise? How?
What's one part of this lesson you would do differently if you were to teach it again in the future?
Were there any parts or activities that students may need more time on before progressing to the next lesson?
Did you identify any gaps in students' understanding?

Bushfire-Resistant Housing - Define Phase

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