Green School Grants - Alberta

The science 9 class at Beaumont Composite High School in Beaumont, Alberta, knew they'd hit the jackpot when, two years ago, the prinicipal's daughter had car trouble.

The class had been studying alternate sources of energy for electricity production and transportation. "One area in particular that was of interest to my students was electric cars and their capabilities," says teacher Daniel Nielson. "Fully electric cars are zero emissions vehicles and, when recharged using solar or wind power, have a greatly reduced impact on the envrionment. Furthermore, they remove the need for oil changes and radiator fluid."

Nielsen's students began learning about electric cars cars that were already on the market, and about how to make their own electric car. When the engine seized up on the principal's daughter's 2000 Dodge Neon, the students seized the opportunituy to apply what they'd been learning.

"The Canadian Electric Vehicle Association has a kit specific to that car," Neilsen explains. "The project we came up with is converting a traditional gasoline-powered car to a fully electric, rechargeable vehicle." The students have started on the conversion, by purchasing the kit and removing the traditional components from the car. "The project has already been a point of discussion in several science classes and has given many of our mechanics students the chance to do the major hands-on work of the conversion," says Neilsen. The grant will allow the students to continue the converstion, by funding the purchase of the batteries that will power the vehicle.

"When complete, the car will be showcased at the school and in the community," says Neilsen, "to prove that electric cars can function as well as any other vehicle."

Harmon Valley Park, near Peace River, Alberta, used to be a beautiful place with an old-growth forest of towering pine trees - until last year. Scott Randall, a grade 6 teacher at Peace River's Good Shepherd School, recounts what happened to the park in 2010. "It was devastated by the pine beetle, and had to be nearly clear-cut by necessity," he says. "This has left what was once a lovely park for camping and picnicking a less attractive area."

The replanting of the park has already started, and with a project called "Harmon Valley Evergreening," Randall, his students, their homeroom teacher, and some parent volunteers are going to do their bit to help the work continue. "I've been in contact with the Peace River area forester for Alberta Sustainable Resources, and he's willing to accompany us to Harmon Valley Park and direct us in tree replanting," says Randall. Alberta Sustainable Resources will provide Randall's team with seedlings, while grant funds will cover the costs of bussing the group to the park, which is 30 minutes from the school. The funds will also buy healthy snacks and lunches for the day, as well as work gloves.

The expedition will be a hands-on continuation of the students' classroom work. "In grade 6 science we study trees and forests, and in grade 6 social science we study social responsibility, so we're undertaking this project as a way for students to meet many of the outcomes of our curriculum," says Randall, although he adds that's not the only goal. "I see this as being a concrete way for the students to contribute to their local area and truly make a difference."

At Monsignor Fee Otterson school in Edmonton, otters are everywhere - or at least, the image of an otter. The otter is the school's icon, and the grade 4 environmental club is called the Eco-Otters. However, the club project the grant is funding has nothing to do with otters - and everything to do with another creature altogether: red wriggler worms. "For the first couple of months of this year, we had a temporary vermi-composter that I borrowed from a friend," says Grade 4 teacher Jennifer Walker. "I think it's great for kids to be involved in seeing what happens to their lunch waste as they use it for something beneficial, and they loved working hands-on with the worms!"

Based on that experience, the Eco-Otters are launching the Eco-Otters Garden of Eden, a full-on scheme that will take the students from lunch waste to vegetable harvest. "The project name came about simply by me thinking about how we can create a little slice of heaven here in the school by starting and growing our own garden from scratch," says Walker. "I figured the Garden of Eden was a great image for the kids to identify with."

The grant funds will pay for a pound of worms and two bins, plus soil, seeds, planters, and gardening tools. All winter, the worms will work their magic on lunch waste. "In the spring," says Walker, "students will then use the collected compost in planting a community vegetable garden, which they'll care for and harvest. The best part of this project is that students can eat the fruits of their labour!" A little slice of heaven indeed.

"Homegrown vegetables without a garden" is the slogan for the Earth Box, the planter of choice for St. Benedict school in Edmonton as it embarks on its gardening project.

"Earth Boxes allow for a large quanitity of vegetables and herbs to be grown in a small space," explains St. Benedict teacher Lynne Andrews. "The technology needs one application of dry granular soluable organic fertilizer for the entire growing season. Less use of chemicals protects our envrionment and the foods we eat." According to Andrews, the Earth Box doubles the yield of a conventional garden.

But those aren't the only reasons Andrews and her team of 25 students from grades 3 to 6 like the Earth Box. "We've chosen this technology because it's endorsed by the United Nations Growing Connections program," she says. The program links school gardening programs and community gardens around the world by encouraging the use of a common growing platform - the Earth Box.

The grant will allow St. Benedict to buy 20 Earth Boxes, but that's just part of the school's project. The seedlings for the boxes will be germinated under a light regulated by a timer to save energy, then transplanted into pots in a sunny location. The mature plants will then go into the boxes.

"Our Solar Energy Garden Market will teach our main gardening team, as well as the entire school community, how Earth Box technology combined with solar energy is an economical way to grow herbs and vegetables," says Andrews. "Many of our families live in apartments without space for a garden. They'll be able to borrow a planted Earth Box over the summer and reap a bountiful harvest."

"Edmonton is a global leader in waste reduction, and it's important that we take pride in that," says Natalie Harasymiw. As the grade 6 teacher and assistant principal at Edmonton's St. Martin Ukranian Bilingual School, Harasymiw is working on building a leadership team in the school, and she's building it around an environmental initiative called St. Martin's Waste Wizards.

"The Waste Wizards project will consist of two student leaders from each of the grade 4 to grade 6 levels," says Harasymiw. "These leaders will be known as the Seers. The Seers will educate the entire student body by raising awareness about creating an atmosphere of sustainable waste management." In their classroom visits, the Seers will note the students with the most enthusiasm for the project, and will appoint them to the role of Wizard.

The Wizards will be responsible for ensuring that their classmates keep the school and schoolyard free of garbage by using the wastebaskets and recycling centre that will be bought with grant funds. "It's important to teach our children - who are our future leaders - to take steps to preserve the integrity of our environment. This needs to become a natural part of their daily routines from a very young age," says Harasymiw.

The Wizards will compete for monthly prizes, and the entire Waste Wizards team will be rewarded, at the end of the school year, with a pizza party lunch, also funded by the grant. "By taking on a leadership role, our students will inspire others to share in our success," says Harasymiw. "Our project will become part of a larger effort to enhance awareness of matters that are essential to the wellbeing of the entire community."

To bring about big change, you start small  as small as a red wriggler worm. That's the strategy Holy Trinity Academy, in Drayton Valley, AB., has adopted with its grant project, "What goes around&. comes around!"

Teacher Mark Basaraba explains. "As a school community, our focus is Social Justice. Students have expressed clearly to us that concern for the environment is high on their priority list of how we operate day to day." The students have been asking for a greenhouse and horticulture program at the school, and that's where the grant project comes in.

"Our strategy is quite simple," Basaraba says. "Engage all members of our school community in composting their lunch leftovers by introducing our student body to vermicomposting." This will address the students' goal. "The vermicomposting is a first step toward providing the nutrients needed for us to begin our own greenhouse."

The grant funds will buy enough worms and worm containers to outfit the entire school. "Each classroom will create a vermicomposting system that they're responsible to maintain," says Basaraba. The grant will also fund materials for a greenhouse. "Students will build the vermicomposting units and participate in the building of the greenhouse, where our compost will serve a useful purpose," he says.

The school has partnered with a local greenhouse owner to create the horticulture course the students want. "The students will be able to see how their recycling actually comes around to benefit them," says Basaraba, "creating a greenhouse, a new course, and a great environment."

"Langevin School is at the heart of the Bridgeland/Riverside community in Calgary's inner city," says April Hillier, a member of the school's Parent Counsel. "Within the community, green spaces are limited, and Langevin's schoolyard is devoid of vegetation, except for struggling grass."

Hillier calls this environment "barren," noting that it offers the school's 600 students minimal outdoor options for either lessons or recreation. "Our goal," she says, "is to transform this barren landscape into a revitalized learning and play space that is sustained through environmentally responsible water management practices."

Despite appearances, Langevin's schoolyard is actually part of the Bow River Valley, despite its current urbanized state. "This disruption of the natural hydrologic cycle," says Hillier, "has serious consequences for our water supply, water quality and aquatic ecosystem health."

To help restore and rebalance the hydrologic cycle, the school will reroute storm water and capture the runoff in a cistern. "We plan to incorporate a rain garden for natural treatment of the runoff," says Hillier, "which will allow us to use the cistern water for irrigation in our naturalized area." As well, she adds, "keeping storm water out of the piped system means contaminants from the parking lot will not end up in the river as pollution."

The grant will help support the school's ambitious plan for its schoolyard, which includes interpretive signage describing the improved runoff management and water-wise plantings. "This will complement curriculum integration," says Hiller, "and raise awareness in our community."

Calgary French and International School in Calgary, Alta., is experiencing first-hand the truth of the mantra that sustainability is a journey.

The K-12 school, known as CFIS, began a lunch composting program two years ago and, according to Parent Counsel member Tasha Backus, "students and staff have enthusiastically adopted the program. We've heard from many students that their families are now composting. The problem we've encountered is the sustainability of our program."

Because of what Bakcus terms "our rodent friends," the school had to move its composting station from a central location near the cafeteria to the perimeter of the school's backyard, where it's far from a supply of water that's needed to keep the compost moistened. Plus, the compostable material is too heavy for the students to transfer that distance tidily, making it more difficult to involve all of them.

CFIS's solution is to build, close to the school, a station with a cement-block base and chicken-wire-reinforced walls to keep out the rodents. The station will also have fold-down front walls, to allow even the youngest students to participate. "Every CFIS child will help to compost each school day," says Backus.

Funds from the grant will pay for the new station's building materials, and for a rain barrel that will collect the necessary water for the composting process. "We're excited about introducing the use of a rain barrel to our composting site," says Backus, "as this is yet another environmentally friendly idea our students can encourage at home."

"Even though many of our students come from a rural environment, there is increasingly little knowledge about using our resources to create environmentally sustainable food," says Debbie Ponich, the principal of Ecole Leduc Junior High in Leduc, Alta.

Ponich hopes to start building that knowledge back up by having the school's special needs class grow a garden on a small piece of land in the school courtyard.

"The students will be planning the garden based on limited resources," says Ponich. "The ultimate goal is to monitor the growing conditions of using the least amount of resources to create the greatest amount of product."

Ponich says that Panther Gardens, as the project is called, will be a chance for the students to use various skills in an enjoyable and rewarding task. They'll be choosing the right crops for the garden's conditions, monitoring the use of water and natural additives, and weighing the vegetables that are produced. The grant will cover costs at every stage, from preparing the land to buying the seeds to setting up a system to collect rainwater.

Ponich hopes Panther Gardens will become the pride of the school  and a model for the wider community. "We plan to use this as small-scale example of what could be occurring on a larger scale for a Leduc Community Garden."

St. Patrick Fine Arts Elementary School in Lethbridge, Alta., is growing. Three portable classrooms have been added to the school building, and they came with their share of challenges, says science teacher Don Flaig.

"Two of our portable classrooms were installed last year without air conditioning and it was very difficult to be in the rooms on hot days," he says. Although the school district has since added cooling units, Flaig wants to turn the original problem into a learning opportunity.

"We want to demonstrate that it is possible to cool a building with the use of gardens and shade trees," says Flaig.

The school already has a small garden plot outside the classroom that heated up the most in the sunlight, and the grant funds will allow the school to buy and plant 15 Linden or Foothills Ash trees, which are native to southern Alberta.

These trees will accomplish a lot, says Flaig, by cutting electricity costs, reducing carbon emissions, providing food and shelter for animals, and improving the aesthetics of the building.

And, while they'll give students who may never have gardened before a chance to lean about the needs of trees and appreciate what they do for us, Flaig says the project, Cooling it the Green Way, also has something to say to those who aren't students.

"It's essential for all of us to understand that it's important to design buildings that can be cooled by shade trees and gardens," he says. "The trees will teach us all about the importance of planning green solutions to our problems."

Tom Baines school in Calgary, Alberta, has done a garbage audit. "We sorted all our garbage over two days," says science teacher Ryan Morgan, "and found that we can better sort, recycle and reduce the amount of waste we generate."

The school got right to work on the improvements. Since the audit, they've put into place paper, bottle and battery recycling programs. However, Morgan says they could be doing more, including recycling plastic packaging materials. The grant will give the school the funds to do that.

"We'll be buying super-sorter, multi-compartment bins that will allow more effective separation of plastics, paper and bottles or cans," says Morgan.

He believes the new bins will make a big difference. Once the project's completed, the school will do another garbage audit. "We're confident that using this system, we'll be able to realize a 50 per cent reduction, school-wide, in the amount of waste, compared to what went to landfill last year."

But according to Morgan, the project isn't just about reduction. "It's generated an enormous amount of interest and awareness and has been a powerful tool to educate our students, their parents and the teachers," he says.

The project's goal, Morgan says, is to inform the thinking of the community about the problems of excessive consumption and the production of waste. He's hoping the next audit will provide evidence of that happening. "We expect a shift in the behaviour of students and staff, with the near elimination of plastic bottles."

"Calgary is a car-obsessed city," says Chris Byron, a teacher at Calgary's Westmount Charter School.

According to Chris, kids in the Alberta metropolis are picked up and dropped off for everything. A study done by a school staffer found that students at Westmount get 50 per cent less exercise than the average. "I feel this is a consequence of being chauffeured everywhere," Byron says.

As a passionate cyclist, Byron saw the opportunity to encourage freedom and exploration, to teach street skills, and to integrate field labs into the school's curriculum, all by creating a Mobile Classroom.

With this grant, the school will be able to buy enough bicycles, packs, and field equipment to allow four classes of grade seven students to take to the road.

Using the bikes as their primary mode of transit, students will head to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary to learn about bird banding, to the Bow and Elbow rivers for river studies, to the reservoir for canoeing lessons " each day in the fall and spring will bring a different destination and a new aspect of environmental education.

Just getting students to participate in those activities will mean the project's been a success. However, as one of the overarching goals is to wean the next generation off petroleum, Byron is also hoping the Mobile Classroom will inspire at least some students at Westmount Charter School to opt for a bike ride, rather than a car ride, for their daily commute.