Green School Grants - Manitoba

The "Soup Garden" at Montrose school in Winnipeg, which has been going for a number of years, is doing exceptionally well. "We believe that planting seeds, watching their growth, and harvesting their bounty will provide a real-life experience for the students and their families of how the decisions they make impact the earth," says the school's principal, Robert Stefaniuk. The students and their families seem to be making the right decisions. "We've had tremendous success producing a variety of vegetables over the course of the growing season."


The school has been relying on the community to share in the bounty, and the work. "During the summer months we welcome the community to stop by and pick what they can eat, in return for a hand with the weeding," says Stefaniuk. "In the fall we harvest the remaining produce and work with school volunteers to cook soup."

However, even with those helping hands and the parent council's annual fundrasing, the school is having trouble keeping up with the garden. "Our sources of funding for garden maintenance are disappearing," says Stefaniuk, "so we're adjusting the design of our gardens to make them more sustainable over the long run." In the short term, the school is also getting help from the grant to participate in a community partnership.

"We're partnering with an inner-city high school program in which marginalized students are gainfully employed while upgrading their education," says Stefaniuk. "Their job will be to ready the gardens for the spring planting and clean up the gardens in the fall." The plan accomplishes two goals – maintaining the garden, and nurturing the youth. As Stefaniuk explains, "Our vision is to connect students to the earth."

A 100-kilometre radius from Oak Lake, Manitoba, was the focus for last year's environmental project at Oak Lake Community School, which looked at local envrionmental issues. "Our innovative idea for 2012 expands beyond the bounderies of our local community," explains Devon Caldwell, a teacher at the school. The plan is to explore the global impact of climate change.

"Controversy continues to rage about global warming and climate change," says Caldwell. "Students will form their own opinions and become advocates for the planet by researching this important issue, examining existing data – and collaborating with students in areas experiencing the impact of climate change."

That collaboration is the innovative idea. The grant funds will buy 12 Flip video cameras and cover the costs of a trip to Riding Mountain National Park, 160 kilometres north of Oak Lake. There, the students will use the cameras to capture footage of the local causes and effects of climat change. However, says Caldwell, "to get footage of geographically distant issues, the video cameras will be mailed to partnering schools, who will record footage and mail it back to our school." The grant will cover the postage both ways. Caldwell says they're expecting to get some interesting footage. "For example, our partner school in Churchill, Manitoba, will record video of polar bears and melting ice."

Once the students have all the footage in hand, they'll produce public service announcements, investigate journalism pieces, and a school-wide debate on climate change, which will be made available to a virtual audience using live streaming. "Using the power of technolody," says Caldwell, "this project seeks to inform and educate not only Oak Lake's K-8 students, staff, and community members, but a global audience."

"We're in a rural area," says Brad Harding, principal of Arborg Early Middle Years School, which is in Arborg, some 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg. "Hydro electricity is not always available, or desirable, in all places."

Harding has put that reality together with the priorities identified for his school  student engagement and sustainable development  and has come up with a project to address it all: a school wind turbine.

The grant funds will buy the turbine and a mounting pole, and will also cover the installation costs. But theres more to the project, according to Harding. The goal is to use the energy generated by the turbine to run a "green" station in the school library, consisting of two computers and a battery charger.

"This station will be available to all students within the school," says Harding. "It will allow students to explore alternative energy sources in a hands-on manner. Using computers attached to the wind turbine will let them experience, first-hand, how wind energy can be used to power daily items with no negative impact on the environment."

Data from the turbine will be posted live on the school website for teachers to use in classroom activities, and for the public to investigate. Says Harding, "in remote areas, there are usages  such as fences, shops, out buildings  that don't require large amounts of electricity. This project will demonstrate that there are other options, besides hydro, for providing them with electricity."

"We've been developing a park-like outdoor education classroom since 2003," says Patricia Graham, principal of Argyle Alternative High School, which is located in the inner city of Winnipeg.

"The outdoor classroom is beautifying the neighbourhood, building community relationships and providing educational information to students and the general public on aboriginal culture, environmental issues and renewable sources of energy."

To support those goals, Argyle recently installed a large solar panel on its outdoor education building. "It's state-of-the-art and made of recycled materials," says Graham. Now, with help from the grant, the school will grow vegetables, flowers and herbs  using solar energy generated by the panel. "Energy efficient LED lights powered by the solar panel will start the plants," Graham explains. "Then they'll be transplanted into Argyle's community. Herbs will be grown indoors throughout the school year, and used by the school cafeteria."

Students and community members together will construct elevated boxes, then fill them with soil and seeds bought with grant funds. They'll also design a set-up for the wire shelving and LED lights bought with grant money.

The entire process will be documented on video by students in John Danko's science classes, who have a track record making award-winning video work. "We'll know we've been successful," says Graham, "when we've provided information on the importance, to a sustainable world, of renewable sources of energy and food production."

Island Lake is a body of water about 300 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. Accessible only by air, it's dotted with small islands. One of them is Stevenson Island, home to Stevenson Island School. "We're a frontier school," says principal Goldie Hennebury. "We have an enrollment of 17 students, from kindergarten to Grade 9."

Because the school's community is in a remote, northern area, "fresh produce is not often available," says Hennebury, "and when it is, it's very expensive." The school lunch program tries to exercise healthy eating, but, according to Hennebury, "diabetes is a major problem in our area and it's a concern with our children."

Hennebury and her husband, who does maintenance for the school, used to own and operate a vegetable farm. Now, with help from the grant, they'll be doing that again, albeit on a small scale. The grant funds will buy a greenhouse structure, trays, soil and seeds. "This will allow the students to learn about growing vegetables from start to finish," says Hennebury. "We'll grow organically. Using the wisdom of the elders in our community, we can use natural ways to enrich our soil for growing, for example, fish meal."

Hennebury sees the project as a way for the community to work together for a healthier future. "By educating our youth, more local gardens can produce local produce, thus cutting down on the amount of produce that has to be flown in," she says. "It may seem like a small start, but it is a start."

"The plot is along a stream bed from which we take our water source," says teacher Elias Wipf. The plot he's talking about is a strip of riverbank, otherwise known as a riparian zone, that runs through the small rural community of Decker, in western Manitoba. "Creating a healthy riparian will improve our water quality," says Wipf.

Wipf teaches Grades 7-12 at Decker Colony School, but his students aren't the only ones who'll be working on the K-12 school's naturalization plot. "All of the students and staff will take part in planting native trees, shrubs, flowers and grass along the riparian," says Wipf.

"We hope to start the project in the spring, as soon as the ground is dry enough to work it," says Wipf. The grant will help pay for a tractor to plow the plot. Then, volunteers from the community will join the students and staff in hand planting the shrubs and sowing the flower and grass seeds, also paid for with grant funds.

The school plans to use the plot as an out-of-classroom education spot where students will learn curriculum content such as photosynthesis and get hands-on experience not only in planting, pruning and weeding, but also in wildlife attraction.

Wipf's hope is that, eventually, "frogs and other aquatic life will croak, birds will sing and raise their families in the birdhouse we hope to put up, and water will flow, clear and clean, throughout the stream."

"Drainage issues are endemic in Manitoba," says Janice Lukes, a member of the parent counsel at Ecole St. Avila in Winnipeg. That's why she's a big fan of biorentention systems, also known as wet meadows or rain gardens.

Lukes believes the systems can not only work, but also teach. "They can be used to demonstrate how the landscape can be used to protect ecosystem integrity," says Lukes, "to show how land and plants can improve drainage in an environmentally sustainable manner."

That's why Ecole St. Avila's parent counsel is creating a demonstration landscape that uses plants and natural systems to clean water.

The landscape is a 14-acre site shared by Ecole St. Avila and Richmond Kings Community Centre. Over three years, Down the Drain, as the project is called, will turn the land into a dynamic, living, micro-ecological system that will reduce the amount of pollutants entering the Lake Winnipeg watershed.

Down the Drain is an ambitious project that already has support from all three levels of government, many local and national funders, and a technical advisory team of experts. That team has put together a wish list of plant species, which this grant will help fund.

While the plants will improve drainage and reduce toxins, the project will increase awareness. With on-site interpretive signage and a teaching guide in the works, Lukes is confident that the landscape will become "a water conservation teaching tool for students, school divisions and the public."

From a municipal perspective, Chapman School is in Winnipeg. From an environmental perspective, it's in the Red River Basin Watershed.

"The Red River is notorious for its many water management issues," says Sandy Welbergen, a grade 4 teacher at Chapman and leader of the school's Green Team, "primarily severe and costly annual flooding."

Watershed management is based on understanding the water cycle and how humans interact with it. "It's important for all players " individuals, businesses, governments and schools " to recognize their role in maintaining the health of watersheds," says Welbergen. "Chapman school can set a local example." The school plans to do that with a rain garden.

For the past several years, Chapman has been revitalizing its grounds and wants to expand that project to include an 80-foot-long rain garden on the western edge of the school yard. The garden will collect rain water and roof run-off, filter it, then return it to the Red River watershed via the community ditches running alongside the school grounds.

The school will use the grant funds to excavate the existing garden, backfill it with drainage rock, then buy and plant trees and shrubs that thrive in wet soil.

There will be many benefits of the rain garden down the road. As they mature, the trees will shade the school and reduce energy costs, as well as creating micro-habitats for study. But, says Welbergen, "an immediate result we hope to see is a reduction of overland flooding in the school yard."

Old satellite dishes make great multi-level gardens that are accessible to all, since wheelchairs can fit underneath them. That recommendation, courtesy of Judy Redmond, the Universal Design Coordinator for Planning at the City of Winnipeg, is just one of the many features that Winnpeg's Ecole Lansdowne will be integrating into its Lansdowne Community Gardens.

The staff and students at the Manitoba K-8 school got together with Ecole Lansdowne's parent advisory council and a group of expert advisors and volunteer professionals that includes, in addition to Judy Redmond, landscapers, engineers, graphic designers, marketing strategists and an award-winning landscape architect.

Together they came up with a two-phase initiative to create a land-use plan for the school and an adjoining city property. Eventually, there will be a vegetable garden, a water harvesting system, and a composting practice at the school.

The grant will fund the first phase, building a prairie garden accessible to both the school and the community. The money is earmarked for buying and planting species native to Manitoba, like the Prickly Rose, the Beaked Hazelnut, and the Saskatoon.

The educational benefits of the project will be many, according to parent council member Melanie Gertley, since the entire school has gotten deeply involved.

"Teachers from every grade implemented lesson plans around the initial design of the gardens," she says, "and they've agreed to develop lesson plans that address education through sustainable development at every phase of the project implementation."

"As citizens of this planet we have a responsibility to look at alternative methods of producing power," says Maximilian Hegel, a teacher at Elmwood High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "But for many people the problem is overwhelming. "I'm just one person, what can I do?" is a question often heard. A project like this helps answer that."

The project is Green Energy. It's a sustainable energy learning centre Elmwood has been developing to demonstrate how wind and solar energy can generate electricity for use inside the school building. The learning centre is in the library, where two computers, available for student use, are running off the grid, powered by a wind turbine installed in front of the school.

"The installation has generated many questions from students and community members," says Hegel, about installing a turbine in their homes. "This is a demonstration of how small-scale power generation works and how it can be installed by individual households."

The next step in that demonstration, says Hegel, is solar power. "Wind is an excellent source for generating power, but it's inconsistent. We haven't had a good wind in a week and the batteries are depleted." With the grant, the school will install solar panels along its south-facing windows.

This highly visible addition will be another example of small-scale alternative energy. "If everyone makes a small effort, the cumulative effects can be very powerful," says Hegel. "This grant is a part of that cumulative effect that we are starting at Elmwood High School."

"Living in a rural area, we breathe clean air and enjoy large, uncrowded spaces," says teacher Devon Caldwell of her community, Oak Lake, in southwestern Manitoba. "With cattle roaming in pastures and fields of ripening corn, it's hard for rural youth to believe that there's an environmental crisis."

But Oak Lake Community School has identified environmental citizenship as a priority area, and the concept of building character today for communities of tomorrow as a strong focus. That's why, says Caldwell, her K-grade 8 school is initiating a project called Local Lessons: 100 Kilometres at a Time.

The grant will help fund the costs of developing a curriculum for character education and service learning using topics relevant within a 100-km radius of the school.

Students will tour the local landfill and learn about adopting strategies to reduce the waste that ends up there. They'll set up a rain barrel system for watering the school's gardens, partner with the local conservation district to build a frog bog and explore sources of local, organic foods for the school's breakfast program.

"Our youth are very malleable," says Caldwell, "and now is the time to provide them with skills for green living. Enthusiastic, responsible children are also a powerful force in educating family and community members."

Caldwell believes Local Lessons will have a ripple effect. "The positive impact will be felt by people, plants, animals in their habitats and our environment in a 100-km radius."

This summer, Nathan Martindale, a Special Education teacher at Shaughnessy Park School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, will be attending a three-day workshop to learn about raising Monarch butterflies.

He'll use what he learns to create an inquiry-based thematic unit for his students. It's the first step in a project Martindale is planning for the school: the Shaughnessy Park Monarch Butterfly Habitat.

In a hands-on learning experience, the students will build a butterfly garden to attract adult butterflies and provide a place for the caterpillars to live. The grant will allow Martindale and his team to buy lumber and soil, as well as the seeds and plants needed to fill the garden with the milkweed the caterpillars feed on and the nectar plants that nurture the adult butterflies.

Martindale says that students in the butterfly unit will not only learn about the caring, life cycle and migration of the monarch butterfly, but related environmental issues as well. The Monarch's winter sanctuaries in Mexico are under threat from logging in the old-growth forests where they're located, and from weather changes brought on by global warming.

"It may seem alarmist to worry about the disappearance of the Monarch migration when Monarchs still number in the tens of millions," says Martindale, "but numbers give no immunity to extinction. A study of monarchs leads to topic of global warming and its consequences for people, wildlife and the planet."

Climate change is of great concern to young people today, says Rick Martin, the principal of Vincent Massey Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Research our students have conducted tells them that approximately 92 per cent of the scientific community agree that global climate change is caused by humans. This worries the students."

Martin is backing a project that allows his students to act on their concerns: Riding the Winds of Change. A brainchild of the school's Sustainable Development Committee, which the students founded to promote school projects with a strong environmental ethic, Riding the Winds of Change aims to create a closed loop industrial system.

The inputs will be sustainable and renewable wind and solar power, while the outputs will be vegetables grown in a school greenhouse and sold in the school's cafeteria. Any surplus food will be composted in the greenhouse, closing the loop.

Since starting up Riding the Winds of Change three years ago, the students have raised more than $25,000 and have installed a wind turbine and bought solar cells. This grant will allow them to buy mounting hardware for the cells.

In 2008, Riding the Winds of Change won fourth place at an international competition for youth-oriented environmental projects in Goteborg, Sweden. In addition to providing the school with clean and renewable energy sources, the project will also, Martin says, "act as a model to the community in terms of how to encourage youth to become good stewards of the environment."

On January 27, 2010, Voyageur school in Winnipeg hosted a community brainstorming session. The goal was to come up with lifestyle changes the community could make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It's a mission the community took on when the school division signed a two-year contract with the Manitoba government to promote the Community Led Emissions Reduction program.

One idea that came out of the session was active and alternative transportation at the school level. That sparked the Voyageur School Community Bike Cage Project.

Voyageur is a K-grade 5 school that also houses a daycare, a nursery school, and a pre-school, so there's a high volume of car drop-offs and pick-ups. "We have a lot of traffic around the school," says Voyageur principal Sandra Lazar.

Over the past two years, Voyageur has worked hard, Lazar says, to become more environmentally friendly, introducing recycling and composting programs, a schoolyard greening plan and a litter-less lunch initiative.

"The next step for our school community," says Lazar, "is to build a bike cage so that students, along with their parents, can ride their bikes to school and safely lock them away."

The grant will allow Voyageur to buy bike racks and the materials for a lockable cage. It will also fund bike helmets that the school can provide to promote safety as well as environmentally friendly action.

The Bike Cage Project will reduce traffic and gas emissions around the school, Lazar says, and increase something that's also important: physical fitness levels.