City's schools increasingly going green
Andrea Klassen Medicine Hat News
When a story about a potential ban on plastic bags appeared in a January edition of the Medicine Hat News, Kendra Oxamitny’s third grade class at I.F. Cox School couldn’t wait to tell her about it.
"They were so pumped about that,” she remembers with a laugh, “they said 'they're following Fort McMurray, maybe it'll turn into all of Alberta, maybe we've already made a difference.'"
Green initiatives are popping up in classrooms and schools in all three Medicine Hat-area school districts. And while teachers and administrators may be in charge of starting them, local educators says it’s the students themselves who are putting in the effort to make them work.
At I.F. Cox, Grade 3 classes have been working on a project called “Kick the Bag Habit” this school year. Oxamitny says students spent the fall researching the harmful effects of single-use plastic shopping bags, and are now making animated video presentations on their findings.
Their videos, along with a class-made brochure and hand- decorated cloth shopping bags, will be presented to parents and the community in time for Earth Day.
Michel Kukurudza, principal of St. Patrick’s school, says his school has been working on “going green” since 2008. The environment, and what students can do to save it, is a topic of discussion in school newsletters and assemblies, and students are encouraged to recycle everything from juice boxes to toner cartridges brought from home.
Students were aware of environmental issues before, he says, but many of them felt they wouldn’t be able to make a difference at five or seven years old. Now they’ve found ways to help - like recycling and reusing materials - Kukurudza says they’re the one’s taking charge of the program.
“If paper's being thrown in the garbage, they're the ones getting it out and putting it in the proper recycling container,” he says. “They're the ones at recess, when they could be outside, rinsing out the milk containers so they can be recycled."
The school also has a $19,100 grant from the city to install solar panels on its portable classrooms this summer. Kukurudza says the panels will become a teaching tool, with students tracking the amount of energy they produce using a website.
Other school programs include:
• Ross Glen School: Grade 6 students partnered with Scholastic Books for “The New Green Classroom.” If students read 100 books before Earth Day, the company will make a donation to protect Canada’s boreal forest in their name.
• Notre Dame Academy: Students shovel sidewalks and driveways in the community, so residents will not have to use snow blowers. The school’s recycling program has seen students recycle almost 14,000 bottles, cans and juice containers.
• Saint Francis Xavier: Started a “Green Team” in 2008. Students have completed over 30 environmental projects, from recycling to writing poems and songs. Teacher
NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT Diedrich White and Bethany Miller, Grade 3 students at I.F. Cox School in Redcliff, decorate canvass shopping bags that they plan on giving to their parents, along with a DVD that explains the negative impact plastic bags have on the environment. This project is just one of many green initiatives Medicine Hat-area schools are taking part in.
Sandra Lerner says 25 to 30 students show up regularly after school for team activities.
• St. Michael’s School: Received an $8,395 grant from the city of Medicine Hat to build a school greenhouse, which will open in the 2010 - 2011 school year. Teacher and green team leader Sarah Kukurudza says students will grow vegetables to learn about the connection between their food and the environment.
We pull together!
Alberta Teachers’ Association
Our collective goal is to provide the best education possible for creating world-class leaders.
Medicine Hat
School District No. 76
522070000•03/30/10
REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA 2010 ■ Celebrating our Community — 61
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