Hello Khursrav,
To address your question, I’d like to share an example from China which is not very far from Central Asia. After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, my colleagues and I organized and implemented earthquake emergency education workshops for teachers and school administrators in the Sichuan Province. The early workshops were designed to answer basic questions most school communities were asking in the aftermath of the earthquake (e.g., Why and how earthquakes happen? Why and how some buildings collapse? Can earthquake damage be reduced? Will there be more earthquakes? What can we do now to prepare for a similar event in the future?). It was very clear that in order for some of these school communities to come to peace with what they had just experienced and to move forward, these questions had to be addressed. In this example, something as simple as sharing information with these teachers is a form of earthquake risk reduction activity.
To integrate earthquake risk reduction into the general school curriculum, a few more steps had to be followed. The later workshops that we taught in the Sichuan Province were designed to introduce a series of earthquake lesson plans with topics ranging from the science of earthquakes to earthquake hazards, mitigation, preparation and planning. Teachers were trained to implement the lesson plans in their classrooms and were encouraged and assisted to make the necessary modifications to make the lessons relevant to their classroom needs. This process involved reviewing the official classroom textbooks that included some information about natural hazards. In the case of China, natural hazards are included in the geography textbooks. For this reason, geography teachers became the engine behind earthquake education in the schools. After their training, these teachers trained their colleagues and teachers from other schools by organizing workshops that focused on earthquake education and how it can be incorporated into the official school curriculum. It goes without saying that for this to happen, teachers and organizers had full support of the Ministry of Education and the Institutes of Teacher Professional Development in the region.
In Tajikistan, physical education (PE) teachers are often the engine behind implementing safety in schools. For this reason, PE teachers and school safety officers were identified and called upon by the Ministry of Education and Teacher Professional Development in Dushanbe to attend an earthquake risk reduction workshop. Later, these teachers became the source of information about earthquake hazards, preparation, planning and drills in their school communities.
I think one of the most important steps in integration of DRR into school curriculum is to identify where and how and by who this integration can most effectively happen. Often schools, regardless of where they are located, are not in a position to create a new course on natural hazards. Teachers are often busy with the already existing curriculum and have tight deadlines for teaching it. Therefore, it is important to identify and augment already existing resources to introduce and integrate DRR. In my opinion, earthquake risk reduction can be incorporated into a wide range of courses including geography, physical education, art, and most importantly sciences.
To view and download some of the aforementioned lesson plans and resources, please take a look at http://parsquake.org/#/lessons/
Regards,Solmaz