Vision

Our vision was to take the work of a couple of passionate teachers who have been starting vegetable plants with students in our school in prior years, with the energy and enthusiasm of the student-led Wednesday lunch club ‘Green Team’ who investigated what to grow and invite our entire school to take part in a school wide action project to plant food and pollinators.

Action

We enlisted the help of a local environmental educator Jade who helped us plan and implement the project with lots of support from our community.

Students were pre-loaded with lessons on defining and understanding grade appropriate key concepts related to climate and sustainability.

Students were informed that there are various health and economic benefits of buying locally grown food. For instance, it promotes food safety and supports the local economy but it also decreases emissions in food transport, reduces the need for packaging and just tastes better! In addition to the food that we eat, pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife. Soil health is everyone’s health! Students were amazed at the amount of living microorganisms that might be found in a single pinch of soil (up to a billion!)

‘I’m so happy to plant the pollinators, they look pretty and they’re good for the insects and for helping us to get food!’ – Student Grade 6

Students took part in a school wide ‘climate action planting day’ on April 16 where each student took part in an outdoor soil lesson and planted a starter, seed or bulb for the school garden beds.

Before this, with the help of our environmental educator we secured planting bags (made from the offcut recycled materials from a locally owned business Shade Sails Canada) and free compost from our local district (CSRD – Columbia Shuswap Regional District). Part of our climate and sustainability project also meant a field trip from our Grade 6/7 class to the local Waste Processing Facility led by Waste Reduction Coordinator and passionate composter Graham Casselman, to see where the ‘away’ is, to talk about reducing our waste and living more sustainably and to tour and talk about Revelstoke’s brand new commercial composting facility that is less than a year old.

We left with two truck loads of fresh and fantastic compost – delivered to school in time for the planting the following day. A huge thanks for the time, energy and spades from local gardening business ‘Garden Hoes’ Jess and Keena.

A full school day of staggered lesson, muddy hands and rain and wind to talk climate, sustainability food and pollinators with hundreds of children. The excitement was palpable and the plants are growing wildly!

The Green Team took responsibility for nurturing (watering) each Wednesday during term time and a local outdoor summer camp will be watering during the summer break. The plant starters will be transplanted to bigger outdoor planting boxes when they are ready (just before the end of school term). The bags can be reused next year and some will be planted with sunflowers that will brighten the daycare next door during their summer programming.

It was an exciting day filled with lots of laughter and learning.

‘I’ve never planted anything before – I hope it grows’ Student Grade 2

Reflection & Celebration

This school wide day of mud, laughter and learning, catered to meet the curriculum for each grade level, whilst participating in hands-on education, mentoring from older students and getting to watch the plants grow and thrive and know they will feed our community, was amazing.

The older Grade 6/7 class got to dive deeper into the concepts of sustainability and taking climate action on multiple fronts – food, clothing, resource use and share that with younger students and community members.

It was two days of magnificent joy and learning.

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