Vision

To ease our school into becoming more sustainable by making manageable changes to the daily lives of the students and staff.

Action

Our actions started out small, I taught Science to Grade 5/6 and started the year off learning about sustainability and the UN’s Sustainable goals. We watched the Learning for a Sustainable Future webinars and completed projects in conjunction with the videos. We even called in someone to help with the creation of codeable seed spreaders, which our class loved. We even partnered with a few primary classes to upcycle rocks to decorate the gardens with kindness. Next year, we hope to decorate our fence line with even more upcycled materials, such as donated rubber boots with plants. We have even lined our gardens with logs donated by staff and a little garden made out of a pallet.

Along the way, Kindergarten classes were learning about their own sustainable journeys by discussing plants and growth. Another teacher started beautifying our schoolyard and our Kindergarten areas with herbs, native plants and pollinators.

I spoke to the caretaker, and she arranged for us to get green bins for the bathrooms (for paper towels) and install kitchen catchers for the sinks in every classroom. I placed a GOOS bin in the photocopy room to save on reusable paper. After receiving the grant, we also built birdhouses with some of our Eco Team friends to hang around the schoolyard. We were even featured in our school board-wide Earth Day video. We even won a tabletop Lomi which has been placed in the staff room.

In the front hallway of our school, we started to grow herbs to give to the devoted Eco Team members at the end of the year (which is right around the corner). We have purchased new supplies to hit the ground running next year.

Reflection & Celebration

The project was overwhelming for one teacher and I was thankful for another teacher to help me. Staffing changes at the end of the year also left us one teacher down to comfortably complete all of the tasks we wanted. I think this year, we bit off more than we could chew but we definitely have a great starting off point for the fall.