Preschool education

A teacher takes on noise pollution

To deal with the problem of noise in schools, Magda Farès has taken some strong measures: she has added pieces of felt to the bottoms of chair legs, soundproofed the furniture and installed a very conspicuous soundmeter to measure the intensity of the noise. When the needle on Mister “Soundmeter” goes over 80 decibels, she enforces a silence. “Noise is harming us, and we don't notice it any more. When everyone has to yell to make themselves heard it's very negative for the classroom experience,” she complains.

The approach taken by Ms Farès has inspired other teachers. Following its new noise reduction policy, La petite gare , a school in La Prairie, has equipped its rooms and corridors with soundmeters. Every semester, prizes are awarded to the groups that produce the least noise. Experience shows that the youngest pupils (kindergarten and grade one) are most motivated and persistent.

But Ms Farès has no plans to stop at that. In a room at the Les cheminots school in Delson on Montréal's south shore, she has followed the progress of her kindergarten pupils as part of her research for a Master's degree in Education. Her work, guided by thesis director Nathalie Trépanier, a professor at Université de Montréal, consists in analyzing and synthesizing literature on the impact of noise on learning in children aged five and six years old. Her own approach, based on tools and activities she has developed to make children more aware of noise pollution, will also count toward the degree.

In 2001, Ms Farès launched the Our Wonderful Ears! project, which consisted of a series of tools to help deal with the problem of noise in schools. One of the tools is a story titled Belle et Décibel . A mermaid with a magnificent voice who lives in the calm of the ocean (Belle) falls in love with a charming boy whose life is a loud din (Décibel). Mr. Soundmeter helps them discover a scientific way to measure sounds so they can find common ground. “This story is a caricature of our noisy society. It helps the children to realize that silence is good for us,” the teacher points out. The children are then asked to discover the lessons of the story by illustrating various situations.

Since 1996, several generations of lovely ladies (Vanessa Cardui) have come into the class to perform a show on the metamorphosis of butterflies. Because it is nature's perfect silent creation, the butterfly enables the teacher to bring up many existential problems with her children, such as birth, death, growing up, etc., all in an atmosphere of calm. Originally from Egypt, Ms Farès has always been sensitive to sound. Initially a graduate in music, she started a career as a teacher at the end of the 1970s. She has won many prizes for her original pedagogical approach combining the arts and teaching, including the 2001 Petromont Prize for Environmental Pedagogy for her Our Wonderful Ears! project.