There’s something special about June. The smell of the first rain, the sight of tender green leaves on the school trees, the way the classrooms fill up again, not just with students, but with stories, energy, and hope. As teachers, you begin another year, another cycle. And nestled in this season is The World Environment Day, a quiet reminder that the earth too is a classroom.

If there's one thing years of teaching teach us, it's that change doesn't come from big speeches, it begins in honest moments. Sometimes, all it takes is a small moment: the way you pick up a fallen leaf to explain symmetry, or how you pause to admire a bird perched near the window. Children notice these things. They learn from what you care about, even when we don't put it on the blackboard.

In your class, you’ve probably never needed to tell students “don’t waste paper”, instead you show them how you reuse your own old charts and folders. You never had to tell them to plant trees, but maybe once, after a school event, you gifted a small sapling to a student who helped you clean up. That sapling became the talk of the class. And the next week, three more students brought their own little plants to show you. That’s how it starts.

During drawing periods, you sometimes encourage them to use the leftover bits of half-used chart paper, broken crayons, and the backs of old worksheets. They don’t complain. In fact, they get creative. Sometimes, a child might make an entire jungle scene out of scrap, using pencil shavings for tree bark and paper scraps for animals. You don’t tell them they’re being sustainable. They just are. And maybe that’s how real learning happens; quietly, playfully.

Over time, you begin to notice that these little things, the 'unsaid' parts of your teaching, leave the longest-lasting impressions. Not every child will grow up to be an environmentalist. But every child can grow up with a respect for nature, for community, for mindful choices. And that’s enough.

So on this Environment Day, you don’t need to change much. You’ll continue to do what you’ve always done, live gently, and let the children see that. You might tell them about the neem tree from your childhood home. You’ll show them how to fold an old notebook into a new sketchpad. And you’ll keep listening to their little observations because in their wonder, you find your own reason to keep teaching.

We don’t need to be experts. We just need to care, out loud.