Green School Grants - Ontario

This past fall, while learning about animals, students in grade two at Forest Glen Public School in Mississauga, Ontario, released four monarch butterflies into the school's courtyard gardens. "Part of our discussion focused on why the butterfly population is decreasing," says teacher Mary Cuylle, "and why the butterflies didn't stay very long in our courtyards – there are no flowers that they like, just lots of weeds!"

That's one of the reasons the school has started a butterfly and hummingbird habitat restoration in the school's two courtyards. "We're slowly clearing out the courtyards so that flowers that attract butterflies can be planted," says Cuylle. The grant money will buy the plants, hummingbird feeders, and also butterfly boxes, so the students can raise caterpillars in the classroom to be released, once they become butterflies, into the restored courtyards.

"Most of the student in our school live in apartment buildings and have very little exposure to nature. Raising caterpillars in the classroom gives students a hands-on activity where they see the life cycle of an insect right before their eyes," says Cuylle. "They have an opportunity to be responsible for that animal and learn how their actions as humans influence the environment of the butterfly."

If the project is a success, not only will the students have gained first-hand experience in environmental stewardship, but hummingbirds and butterflies will have gained a new habitat. "The ultimate success," says Cuylle, "would be butterflies laying their eggs on our milkweed plants!"

"My Grade 11 Environmental Science class studies human impacts on the environment," says Paul Cooney, who teaches at Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket, Ontario. "But since this is a workplace preparation class, I don't like to limit our studies to book work. I like to select at least one Action Project a semester."

This semester's Action Project is called "Do Not Idle." "We've studied CO2 emissions exhaust," says Cooney, explaining how his students monitored drop-off areas near the school and counted the number of cars that idled, rather than turned off, their engines. "We've even timed how long it takes an idling vehicle to fill a large garbage bag with exhaust."

Prompted by those studies, Cooney's students have decided they can help reduce carbon emissions at their school with signs reading, "Please do not idle." The students have researched sign suppliers, visited sites that already have such signs to study placement, and have drawn maps to indicate where the signs will go up at their school. Now, thanks to the grant, which will buy the signs, the school's main entrances will all display the anti-idling message.

Once the signs have been up for a while, the students will repeat their surveys of idling in drop-off areas. The goal, says Cooney, is to "show these kids that their ideas – that cause one person at a time to change behaviour – can make a difference!"

"We are in a bear-populated area," says Joanne McCrae, who teaches at Irwin Memorial Public School in Dwight, Ontario. Dwight is located just outside Algonquin Park, Canada's oldest provincial park, so it's not surprising that the area is inhabited by bears as well as people. This reality posed a unique challenge to McCrae's environmentally-minded students.

"Last year, my grade 7/8s wanted to make a difference. They conducted a school waste audit and discovered that we could produce 1,814 kilograms of compost a year," says McCrae. The discovery inspired the students to come up with a plan to get a composter and create a community garden. The first step in the project is to tackle the challenge of keeping local bears away from the food scraps. With grant funds, McCrae and her students will buy a bear-proof compost bin – and 90 lineal feet of six-foot-high, nine-gauge galvanized chain link.

"It will be important to have a fence around the garden that guards against intrusion from unwanted visitors – bears – and still permit access to those who are welcome – birds, bees, butterflies, and people," says McCrae. "Chain link will allow sun and visual access, but slow down bears and deer." In the spring, students in grades one and two will sow seeds for plants that attract the creatures the garden is targeting. The children will also be welcoming many human helpers into the garden. As McCrae notes about the composting and garden initiative, "We have the full support of school council, and all of Irwin!"

"A large percentage of our students were born abroad or come from new Canadian families," says Anneke Smit, a member of the parent counsel at L'Envolée Elementary School in Windsor, Ontario. "Many live in apartment buildings in central Windsor and have little access to green space and limited exposure to gardening."

That's why Smit, along other parents and a couple of teachers, has teamed up with the director of the campus food program project at the University of Windsor and the school greening coordinator for the Essex Regional Conservation to launch "Plan, Plant, and Post!" It's a school garden project that, according to Smit, has a few special features. "First, not only the gardening but also the planning of the garden will be managed by the students," she says. To get a chance to participate in the project, the students will write about why they want to take part. The 15 students selected will get a chance to design the garden beds and choose native seeds and plants.

The grant will help buy the materials, while the community advisors will help guide the students. Smit says that's another special feature of this project. "The role modeling the students will receive will be invaluable." The students will also be doing some role modeling themselves, by writing about their experiences – from planning, to planting, to harvest – on a website. "Through this, the community, both school and wider, can follow their progress," says Smit, "and students will have an opportunity to reflect on what the garden experience has meant to them."

France St-Denis knows potential when she sees it. That goes for places and people. St-Denis is a special education teacher at Le Relais Catholic Secondary in Alexandria, Ontario. "I like to bring new challenges to my students," she says. That's why she's asked her students to help transform an abandoned lot behind the school into an outdoor classroom.

St-Denis has a clear vision for what, at the moment, is a weed-choked site. The soil there is fertile, and she's imagining a four-seasons retreat that can be used "in the fall, for the charm of the beautiful colours, in winter for creating snow sculptures, and in spring for observing nature reawakening." All this, she says, will be designed, constructed, and managed by the students, with help from teachers, staff, and the grant. The grant funds will buy everything from wood for planters and benches to flowers and fruit trees.

The site is next to a stream, and the project team will also design footpaths that will allow students to hike in a serene setting. "This enchanting place will not only have a positive influence on our environment, but also on the physical, psychological, and spiritual development of our students," says St-Denis, adding that the site will be an inspiration for classes in religion, biology, visual arts and more.

St-Denis says the students won't be the only beneficiaries of the outdoor classroom. The plan is to donate the garden's edible harvest to the St-Vincent de Paul Society, which hosts weekly low-cost community dinners. "The project will be an asset to the whole town of Alexandria."

The Culinary Arts program at Nepean, Ontario's new Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School plans to open a small café for students and teachers at the school. And Kent Van Dyk, who teaches in the program, is determined that the café will be serving up produce grown in the school's own garden.

"A functional garden that the students plant, tend, and harvest," says Van Dyk, ties directly into core values the program hopes to impress upon students: eating locally, seasonally, and organically whenever possible." To that end, the school is setting aside three 200-square-foot pieces of land on school grounds. The grant will help transform the plots into gardens, by funding the purchase of non-chemical treated cedar for fencing and raised beds, along with trellising materials for beans and peas.

The grant money will also buy apple, pear and cherry tree seedlings for an orchard. "Our students are often more familiar with an apple variety from 2,000 kilometres away than one grown in our area," says Van Dyk. "As more and more of our food is imported, it's important to show people, especially young people, that eating locally and growing our own food, even in small quantities, does help the environment."

Van Dyk says the garden will also serve as a sanctuary for students and staff, as well as an outdoor classroom. "A garden is an excellent teaching tool," he adds, and not only for the cultivation and use of fresh vegetables and herbs in the kitchen. "The success of the program should be evident from a variety of sources," he predicts – including the menu of the school café.

Limited space and limited resources – those are constraints many schools bump up against when dreaming about a garden on school grounds. Ontario's Richmond Hill High School has come up with a way to address those constraints, according to James Wengle, who teaches science at the school and supervises its Greenhouse program. He and 50 students are taking part in "The Grow Up Garden."

"The students will overcome our space limitations by growing vertically on our 200-foot-long fence," says Wengle. The grant will pay for a one-time amendment of soil and compost and then, says Wengle, "crops well-suited to vertical growth – like peas, beans, carrots, squash – will be planted, in addition to student-led experimentation with various vegetable crops."

Another constraint the school is dealing with is the lack of a water or electricity source near the garden plot. "That will be addressed by constructing a solar-powered rainwater drip irrigation system," says Wengle. Grant funds will pay for the materials and the students will build and implement the system. In the process, they'll be learning about both water conservation and renewable sources of energy.

The fact that students will be directly involved in every aspect of the project is a key to its success, according to Wengle. "Many youth do not feel directly connected to their environment nor feel empowered to make a difference," he says. "Students who are part of the ‘Grow Up Garden' project will use their hands to change the landscape at our school and will experience the reward of growing their own food from seed – and caring for other by sharing it."

St. Anne's Catholic School is located in a beautiful residential neighbourhood of Cornwall, Ontario. There's just one problem with the location: it's right near the city dump and, according to Chantal Gadbois, a teacher at the school, "the smell is often overpowering."

Two years ago, the school's Go Green Group collaborated on a student-teacher brainstorm. "We came up with the idea that if we can divert compostables from the dump, we will moderate the smell, as well as reduce the waste that presently ends up in the landfill," says Gadbois.

The only snag in the idea is that it's costly to implement. "We have done a bit of fundraising in the school," says Gadbois, "and with the small amount of money we raised, the group decided to fit every classroom with a blue box." Now, with the grant, the Go Green Group will be able to fund the materials and labour needed to construct a fenced-off composter in the schoolyard, and buy worm composting bins and trays.

The project is dubbed "Composting Rocks!" but it's aimed at diverting from the dump more than compostable material. Students will be educated about the benefits of using stainless steel rather than plastic bottles, and encouraged to make use of the Good On One Side paper depots that will be set up around the school. The Go Green Group will weigh the paper, count the bottles, and tally the compost. "The amount of compost produced by the school will be measurable," says Gadbois, "and will directly reflect the amount of waste diverted from the landfill site."

"The rest of our school has green features," says Rebecca Parenteau, a student at Toronto District Christian School, "but not our garden shed." The shed, which was constructed by the students, houses garden tools for the school's environmental classes, but Parenteau calls the shed itself a dead space in environmental terms. That's why the students are planning to top the shed with a green roof.

Parenteau and her classmates at this school in Vaughn, a municipality north of downtown Toronto, have the plan all worked out. With help from the grant, they'll insulate and waterproof the top of the shed, installing barriers to prevent soil from spilling. Next comes a drainage and capillary layer, then a root-permeable filter layer. Finally, they'll add native and drought-resistant plants. "Some examples of plants we plan to purchase and plant with this grant are sedum, oreganum, aizoon, reflexum, ellacombianum, and sexangulare that are ideal for green roofs in southern Ontario in indirect to mild sunlight," says Parenteau, demonstrating her new knowledge about green roofs.

Parenteau has assembled a long list of the benefits the green roof will confer. It will help sewer overflow by using rainwater for the plants, and create a new habitat for insects and other small creatures. With its waterproofing and insulation, the roof will extend the life of the shed. And, says Parenteau, because the shed is right by a main sidewalk, it will be an environmental example not only for the whole school but also the whole community. "This will be the first green roof in the city of Vaughn, and will raise awareness of the projects that people can do."

Oriane Edwards is a grade 10 student at University of Toronto Schools, or UTS, who is already thinking about the future, and the role her school can play in it. "When interviewed after they became successful, many alumni cited UTS as being the most influential institution that shaped their current lives. If UTS shapes the way alumni see the world socially, why not shape the way they see the world environmentally?"

With that question in mind, Edwards and two of her schoolmates have initiated a project called "Like the Tree, So the Waste?" It's aimed at a change that is more mental than physical, for pragmatic reasons. "Our school's community building will, in around eight years, be relocated from our century-old home to more modern facilities," says Edwards. "Considering this, it would be a waste of money and effort to update the building. Instead, our project is attempting to change the building's inhabitants."

The goal is to eliminate UTS' paper waste by changing behaviour patterns and administrative approaches. The students will conduct a baseline audit of the amount of paper the school buys and throws out, then give presentations to students and staff on double-sided printing, electronic assignments, and recycling. According to Edwards, "The school's stubborn population must be convinced that it's time to change." The grant will pay for the printing of signs and stickers to go on printers and recycling bins. "We realize the only way to make long-term change is to modify the way people see their day-to-day world. That way, our efforts won't be lost on a single building, but will change the way students interact with the environment for the rest of their lives."

"We want to cultivate a connection with our immediate environment," says Joel Biesenthal, who teaches at Bishop E.Q. Jennings Senior Elementary School in Thunder Bay, ON. "A beautiful forest and river system, along with our soccer field and a public baseball field, are right out our back door, waiting to be explored."

Biesenthal has already led some back-door expeditions. "I take students out into the trails in the forest and along the river at lunch. We stop and look at various tracks or signs of animal activity. My students love it, as do I."

Biesenthal believes these outings offer more than enjoyment. "Students today have a disconnection with nature due to advancements in technology. There is more and more research that shows this  it falls under the term 'nature deficit disorder.'" Biesenthal's outings help redress that deficit, but, as he says, keeping them up year-round "can be challenging with our long winters."

Biesenthal has discovered a solution to the challenge: snowshoes. He's been taking small groups of students out on the few sets the school already has, but his goal is to outfit two classes. Thanks to the grant, the school will be able to buy 45 sets of snowshoes. "We'll be able to use them during our lessons in science, math, history, geography, literacy, phys. ed.," he says. "The possibilities are endless."

L'École secondaire catholique Jeunesse-Nord moved into its new school building in Blind River, ON., five years ago. Good news, except that, as teacher David Lafleur explains, "The site was damaged by the construction and has been neglected since."

However, Lafleur says the staff, teachers and students have teamed up and are ready to work together to furbish the schoolyard. The goal is to make it a place where not only members of the school but also members of the community can study, meditate and play in nature.

"The school is situated where many people have access to it," says Lafleur. "It's close to the centre of town, and a number of seniors' residences are nearby. We'd like to make an outdoor environment where everyone will feel welcome to take a walk or relax on a bench."

With grants funds, the school will buy a variety of indigenous plant species, including shrubs and trees. The idea is to attract people  and wildlife. To further that goal, students in the school's workshop classes will build birdhouses, and they'll be getting help from the site itself. "We intend to take advantage of the resources that are currently in the schoolyard," says Lafleur. "We want to re-use existing materials to build animal habitats."

The school has enlisted partners from the community, including a building supplies store, a parent with landscaping expertise, and local artists. They'll work with the students toward a shared vision of a place that not only attracts but also sustains nature.

"Many of our students do not understand where food comes from and how it's grown," says Erin Durham, who teaches at Holy Family Catholic School in Oakville, just west of Toronto. That's why the school is planting a vegetable garden  and with it, a new way of planting understanding in their students.

"This project involves my special education class taking a leadership role in cultivating the garden," says Durham. "The class will mentor students in young grades to grow various food plants, such as lettuce, beans and spinach."

The school already has 10 wooden planters sitting unused at the base of the playground. The grant funds will supply the basics soil, seeds, some tools  needed to transform the planters into a garden, and Durham's class will supply the knowledge and skills to make it grow.

"After learning about the life cycle of various food-producing plants, and the process involved in planting, cultivating and harvesting food, the students in my class will help explain the concepts to primary students," Durham says. "They'll learn about making environmentally responsible decisions, such as growing foods organically."

While the primary students will benefit from partnering with their "student teachers" to create a flourishing garden, Durham says it's those young teachers who will learn the most, gaining social, communication and all-around life skills from the project. Plus, she says, "Their self-esteem will increase as they're viewed as role models for the younger students, and as contributing positively to the school community."

How do you save transportation costs, fossil fuel and food waste  all with a single project?

For Iroquois Falls Secondary School in northern Ontario, the answer is a project to convert the school bus. "Essentially, we'll be making the bus engine a dual-fuel engine that is diesel and vegetable oil," says teacher Wayne Clark. "We'll be using a renewable fuel source instead of just a non-renewable, fossil-fuel source."

The students in Clark's Grade 10-12 transportation course will oversee the conversion. "We will be installing a second fuel system, complete with tank, filters, lines, heat exchanger and pump," the costs of which will be covered by grant funds.

The funds will also cover a storage and filtration system for waste vegetable oil, which the school will be collecting for free from local restaurants. "At present, they rely on outside individuals and agencies to pick up and dispose of their used vegetable oil," says Clark, "with some of the waste oil going to the local landfill site."

In addition to keeping the oil out of landfill, the project will save fuel costs for the school teams and school outings, giving students more opportunities for extra-curricular and community activities like their Christmas food drive.

And of course, adds Clark, with less fossil fuel being burned, "an immeasurable but important benefit will be to the environment."

"Today's youth are all about the modern, the sleek and the visually compelling," says Sarah Lee.

As a student at Markville Secondary School in Markham, north of Toronto, Lee should know. She and her fellow members of the "waste department" of Markville's Eco Club have been observing their peers, and the club's insights are the basis of their project, Dual-Bin Beauty.

"A great issue plaguing our school is the initiative to recycle outside the classrooms," says Lee. "Students feel lazy and simply throw their recyclable containers into the closest waste bin." Lee and her colleagues would like to shift that behaviour, and they're planning to do it by focusing on what's right about this scenario  the students aren't littering and they are using bins.

So, with funds from the grant, the club will buy better bins  large, dual-use waste-recycling ones, "like those seen in front of shopping centers," says Lee.

Those may seem high-tech for a high school, but Lee says that's the point. "As these professional bins establish a presence in the school setting, students will begin to realize that recycling is a more serious business than they had originally thought." And what's more, because the look's the thing with people her age, Lee believes that, as she says, "the change from old, crusty bins to new, modern ones will stimulate a passion for the idea of recycling!"

"The Kill Your Bill Challenge is a new, pioneering initiative that aims to increase energy efficiency within schools," says Matthew Narine, a Grade 11 student at Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School in Brampton, ON.

Along with fellow students Aian Binlayo and Yiu Chun Chan, Narine founded Kill Your Bill. "It aims to increase energy efficiency within schools through a district-wide energy reduction competition," he says.

The school district Narine is talking about is one of the biggest in the province, with 150 schools. They're all invited to register on the Kill Your Bill website. When they register, they'll be asked to report their square footage and energy use for the previous year. Then, they'll be sent a package of tips and strategies for reducing energy consumption in the classroom and in the school.

To take part in the competition, the schools must, at the end of every month, go back to the website and enter the most current information about their energy usage. "All data collected will be made available online and used as a public, real-time indicator of which schools are making the most significant reductions," says Narine.

Although, according to Narine, the initiative focuses on instilling a deeper sense of environmental leadership within students and improving their ecological literacy, it also promotes what he calls "a friendly sense of competition between schools." The grant funds will make it possible to recognize, at year's end, the first-place school with a proper trophy, complete with plaques and ribbons.

In our world today, we face a number of environmental concerns," says Malyn Fischtner, a student at Our Lady Immaculate elementary school in Strathroy, ON. "As students, we believe that even the smallest action can help preserve our environment and help fight the challenges we face."

That's why Fischtner says the school's Student Parliament committee is very excited to begin the action they've targeted. "We believe that one of the tasks we can participate in to help our environment is composting biodegradable materials," says Fischtner. She and her fellow students are very clear on the difference this action can make. "This is an effort to reduce the amount of waste that's being produced and taken to dump sites throughout the country."

"Our first priority," says Fischtner, "is to purchase a large composter to be planted within the school grounds." This the committee will be able to do with funds from the grant. The money will also buy recycling pails. "Each classroom and staff room will receive a pail, in which they'll place biodegradable materials from their lunches and snacks," says Fischtner. Members of the Student Parliament will be responsible for emptyting the pails twice and week and for maintaining the composter.

Fischtner says this project is just the beginning. "After the composting initiative is off the ground, we're going to develop recycling clubs and gardening clubs," she says. "Every day at Our Lady Immaculate will be Earth Day!"

David Lafleur believes that stewardship of the earth begins with education, because that's how we learn empathy for other species. So, for Lafleur, who teaches at Quaker Road School in Welland, ON., the garden that he and the school's Green Team are planning is the natural outcome of a learning process.

"We aim to increase understanding of environmental issues and solutions," says Lafleur as he explains the project. "Through education, we can impact carbon reduction, increase neighbourhood food security and nutrition, and impact skin cancer rates." At Quaker Road School, that education will take the form of a series of interactive eco workshops, funded by the grant. "Through the eco workshops, students will better understand soils, healthy habitats, tree planting, local food benefits, waste, consumption and conservation practices."

For the hands-on part of this educational program, the grant will also fund the purchase of soil and compost, plus native plants that students, with their new knowledge, will use to transform their schoolyard. Says Lafleur of the whole process, "the end result will be shade trees, shrubs and leaf litter, plus a community food garden in the schoolyard." The goal is to eventually have 15 per cent of the tarmac shaded by trees.

The students aren't the only ones who'll be learning from the garden project. One of the workshops will be for teachers from other schools and other school boards. "Many teachers will be educated to a lighter footprint," says Lafleur, "enabling them to implement the same concepts into additional schoolyards."

Saugeen District Secondary School in Port Elgin has one of the first Energy Specialist High Skills Major programs in Ontario. Students from that program, together with "Planeteers," as members of the school's environmental action group are called, have already put their studies to practical use.

"In their course of study," says teacher Nancie Darlington Smith, "they've examined principles of sustainability and strategies for resource management." The students' goal, according to Darlington Smith, is to implement the technologies they've researched, and they've taken the first step in that direction. "They worked collectively to develop a vision for the retrofit potential of the school," says Darlington Smith, "and submitted the vision to the school board for consideration."

Now, thanks to the grant, the students will be able to begin making that vision reality. The funds will pay for a turbine tower and solar array, plus the materials needed to install them at the school.

"It's critical to be empowering students as environmental leaders," says Darlington Smith. She believes that doing so will have a ripple effect far beyond the benefits of this one retrofit. "The reduction of energy consumption through this project will give the entire community the knowledge and confidence to pursue projects of a larger scale."

Those larger-scale projects may well be just around the corner, as the school building is slated for major renovations. "Our project will serve as a model for additional retrofit projects at the school," says Darlington Smith, "which will validate the work of the students."

"Last year was our first year as a designated EcoSchool," says Erin Mutch, who teaches biology at Sauders Secondary in London, ON.

Ontario EcoSchools is a provincial program that recognizes schools for their achievements in energy conservation, waste minimization, ecological literacy and school-ground greening with annual certification. In 2010, Saunders was certified silver. Now, Mutch wants to take the school to the next level. "I've developed a new double-credit course to further the initiatives we've started," says Mutch.

Saunders' Environmental Science and Stewardship course will give Grade 10 and 11 students the opportunity to develop their leadership skills by promoting ecological literacy amongst younger students and in the community at large. The older students will run workshops and tours of the school's existing environmental initiatives, and help students in the elementary schools that feed into Saunders to come up with and implement their own projects.

"The intention," says Mutch, "is to use the energy of our secondary-school students to spark change in those younger  and older." Mutch's students will also be implementing projects in the neighbouring community, and they'll be delivering field study sessions to acquaint the elementary students with their natural surroundings.

According to Mutch, "the grant money will help jumpstart the course." The funds will pay for a full class set of microscopes, plant and wildlife field guides, binoculars and sampling tools. "These materials will be used to continue the outreach program for many years," Mutch says, "which will develop environmentally responsible citizens for our community."

Jason Pilot teaches science at Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate and Vocational Institute in Thunder Bay, ON. He's analyzed the ecological footprint of his school's cafeteria, and he's found much room for improvement.

"The cafeterias in our school board are forced to turn a profit to survive," says Pilot. "That means they must find the cheapest ingredients for the meals. Typically, the cheapest food comes from major food distribution companies that transport the food from various parts of the world."

Pilot has come up with a plan to address that state of affairs. "Our project has the potential to reduce our school cafeteria's reliance on purchasing 'cheap' food," he says. The project involves fixing up the school's greenhouse. The grant funds will pay for building materials, including plexiglass, bricks and piping for the heating system, and lumber for greenhouse tables.

Pilot is hoping that by the fall of 2011, the greenhouse will produce enough vegetables to subsidize the majority of the cafeteria's menu for a full week, as a way of generating interest in the project, and supply this fall's 100k-day cook-off. That's when students in the environmental science classes collect ingredients from within 100 km of the city and cook meals over an open fire using local ingredients and "slow food" methods.

"By using local vegetables we can reduce the carbon footprint of our cafeteria," says Pilot, "and cut down on costs, which may allow the cafeteria to buy more local food from local farms, instead of using large companies as suppliers."

"We have fierce determination and commitment to help our community and environment," says Deanna Mao, a student at St. Ignatius High School in Thunder Bay, ON. Mao is a member of the school's active environmental club. "Having done smaller-scale projects, we're ready for something larger," she says.

That something is the St. Ignatius Wildlife and Meditation Garden, which will turn part of the school's extensive grounds into what Mao calls a haven for plants and animals and a sanctuary for students. "We hope to plant many native plants species, such as boreal and prairie grasses and flowers, and woodland ferns, flowers and shrubs."

The club will be able to buy those native plants with funds from the grant, which will also cover the purchase of large stone to serve as benches. "Our school has an amazing view of Lake Superior," says Mao, adding that the benches will be placed to take advantage of that view. A cobblestone path will wind through the garden for those who'd rather wander than sit.

Mao hopes that besides offering students a place to relax, the garden will attract fauna. "By having a diversity of flowers and plants that are local to our area, we're providing food and shelter for a variety of species birds, butterflies, moths and other insects, even small mammals." This goes to the project's big ambition, which is, as Mao puts is, "enhancing the stability of the ecosystem."

"Our garden will be as much about people as it is about plants," says Catherine Dorton, a Parent Counsel member at Williamson Road Public School in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood.

Dorton is one of the 13 parents, teachers and local gardening experts who make up the school's Garden Development and Oversight Committee. They hope their organic edible garden will enhance the heath and wellbeing of not only the school, but the community, too.

To that end, the committee has partnered with community organizations. The Toronto District School Board, which supports the development of school market gardens through its Go Green Climate Action Change Plan, is supplying school-ground greening consultants. The WWF-Canada Green CommUnity School Grant will supply the funds for gardening equipment and tools  everything from rain barrels to watering cans. The school has also drafted Foodshare Toronto to join the partnership.

The school will be offering space in the garden to local seniors. And, says Dorton, "we're partnering with the Beaches Recreation Centre to use their kitchen to cook and preserve our harvest. Young children can pick and wash vegetables that older students and volunteers can make into soup and salad for all to enjoy!"

Dorton's committee will survey the community for feedback on the garden, for which they high hopes. "Our ambition is to plant a garden that will flourish into a market garden, with produce for sale at pay-what-you-can prices, and eventually an urban farm."

"Toronto began diverting organic waste from homes and restaurants several years ago," says Adam Allett, a resource teacher at Torontos Bialik Hebrew Day School. "However, the organic waste from schools has not been addressed."

According to Allett, that leaves Toronto schools with a choice: Wait for someone else to solve the problem, or, as he puts it, "face the challenges head on. Bialik HDS has chosen the latter." Given Bialiks track record in sustainability, thats no surprise. Last school year, Bialik was certified Gold Eco-Friendly by the Ontario Eco-Schools Initiative, and it already has several gardens on school grounds.

Those gardens sparked Bialiks home-grown solution, once it became clear that no outside waste company was going to accept the schools organic waste. "At the moment we use store-bought soil to keep our gardens flourishing," Allett exlains, "but it has always been our hope to create our own soil through vermiform composting."

The grant will allow the school to buy nine five-tray "worm factories," complete with worms. Allett hopes theyll produce enough rich soil for not only the school but also for families who want to use it in their own home gardens.

"All this works back to our original project goal," says Allet. "Teaching students that there is a harmonious relationship between humans, food and animals that can break down our food waste and help us return uneaten food back to where it came from the ground."

Jessie Snyder is a Grade 11 student at Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, ON., and she is passionate about recycling. "Its so important to our planet and the fact that we have the ability to do this and we are not is horrible."

Snyders school already has a blue-bin recycling program but she believes it isnt working well enough. Snyder and her classmates in the eco awareness group she helps lead, EDGE (Environmental Duty for a Greener Earth), believe theyve identified why. "Recycling has become an automatic reaction for most people in Canada and the problem our school faces is not that people dont know how to recycle," Synder says. "Its that sometimes a garbage can is closer than a recycling bin, and we want to change that."

The grant will buy 150 gray bins and 150 G.O.O.S bins, for paper thats good on one side. Having not only lots of bins readily to hand around the school but bins designated for specific material will, Synder says, solve another snag in the existing system. "People just throw their paper recycling in with the cans, and because everythings all mixed in one bin the bin content sometimes ends up being contaminated and thrown out."

"With the new bins in place," Synder says, "nothing that can be recycled will leave our school in the garbage again and this will mean the world to our enthusiastic EDGE team."

At Bruce Peninsula School in Lions Head, On., sustainability initiatives are at the heart of who and where they are. According to John Rodgers, the science and math teacher for Grades 9-12, the schools Judges Creek Water and Habitat Improvement Project "fits into the larger school mandate as a UNESCO designated school located in a biosphere reserve."

Lions Head is a port village on Isthmus Bay, on the Bruce Peninsula, which is at the northern tip of the Niagara Escarpment. In 1990, UNESCO designated the escarpment as a World Biosphere Reserve, to recognize its boreal forests and wetlands as an internationally significant ecosystem.

However, that system continues to be under threat. As part of the schools specialist high skills major in the environment and with the support of this grant, students will work with a local landowner to remediate a tributary of Judges Creek. According to Rodgers, like many of the peninsulas watercourses, the creek flows through farm land. Changes in agricultural practices over time have, says Rodgers, resulted in "severe degradation of habitat and a decline in water quality."

Students will study ways to avoid using the stream for power and watering, designing and installing alternative technologies with material funded by the grant. Theyll also measure the baseline habitat quality and monitor the improvements to the stream bed and banks.

"The project will provide students with a direct connection to being a source of knowledge," says Rodgers, "and part of the solution to a local problem."

"C.E. Webster is an inner-city school," says primary teacher Catherine Watts of Toronto. "Our students, many of whom live in apartments, have little opportunity to become intimate with nature. However, given the chance, they delight in being outside."

Fortunately, theyve had plenty of chance in the past four years, since staking out a half-acre area of the schoolyard. The stakes kept lawnmowers from intruding, and allowed the "no-mow" area to naturalize and attract wildlife.

Watts says dragonflies and their insect prey have settled into the grasses. And, she says, "Were delighted to see that the squirrels have planted six walnut trees, and we have a pair of mockingbirds in the area." Still, the school would like an even greater variety of wildlife.

With help from the grant, the school will expand their project, "Diversity in the Meadow," to almost an acre. Students will choose which native seeds and plants to buy with grant funds, selecting them to attract diverse species.

However, one species is not welcome. "Very aggressive and dangerous thistles are spreading in the naturalized area, because of rubble dumped there by unthinking construction crews," says Watts. Having tried unsuccessfully to eradicate the thistles, the school will now use grant funds to backhoe new topsoil into the meadow.

As the meadow flourishes, so do the children. Watts says curriculum in many subjects can be covered in the naturalized area, including art and language. "Outdoor education adds to equitable learning, allowing those students who learn kinesthetically or through nature to succeed."

In February 2011, each "pod" of four classrooms at Cedarwood Public School in Markham, ON., will get a bin of worms. Specifically, a plastic bin of red composting worms. Then the fun part starts: looking after the schools smallest members.

Although the schools 12-member eco team will lead this waste reduction and awareness initiative, all 740 students in the school will be involved, says teacher Rebecca Ranta. "Classrooms will be on a rotation schedule to care for the worms each month."

Once the eco team has set up the composting bins and given out instructions on how to look after them, "the classes will be responsible for adding food scraps to the bin for that month to maintain and encourage optimal composting conditions," says Ranta.

At the end of each month, the eco team will collect the bins, and weigh and record the contents. Since the team will also have done measurements before handing out the bins at the beginning of the project, theyll be able to track how much compost is created over the month and, ultimately, over the year.

The goal of the project, though, is to create not only compost, but awareness of the small steps we can take to reduce waste. "Seeing the monthly changes happen in the classroom," Ranta hopes, "will leave a long-lasting impression on the students."

"Cell phones, digital cameras and ink cartridges contain numerous harmful heavy metals that will leach into the ground water if disposed of improperly," says Gary Serviss, co-operative education teacher at General Panet High School in Petawawa, ON.

Thats why the school began its Eliminate E-Waste program. "We began by having students bring in their used ink cartridges from home and encouraged them to do so by offering small raffle prizes twice a year," says Serviss.

From there, the program expanded to include all buildings on CFB Petawawa, then schools, libraries, hospitals and businesses in Petawawa and neighbouring communities. "Over the past five years," says Serviss, "we have diverted over 100,000 phones, cameras, inkjets and toner cartridges from local landfills."

But Serviss and the school have even higher ambitions. With funds from the grant, theyll be buying six battery collection canisters. It will supplement the one already installed in the school lobby, which Serviss says is filled every couple of weeks. By providing more safe locations for the disposal of batteries, "well be eliminating them from being included in regular garbage," says Serviss.

The grant will also fund more community collection bins and promotional materials to advertise the schools Eliminate E-Waste program. The goal is to reach every business and household in the area, "with the hopes," says Serviss, "of eliminating all e-waste from our local landfill."

"Because of the extreme energy consumption necessary to sustain our current international food economy, the creation of a local food economy in Toronto is imperative," says Anna Hill, a Parent Counsel member of Givins Shaw Junior Public School and a founder of the Givins Shaw Sowers and Growers Club.

Hill is also the coordinator of the Trinity Bellwoods Greenhouse in a city park near the school. There, students will start to learn not only "how far most food travels before it appears on their plate," says Hill, but will also begin to "experience the joys of growing food themselves."

In February, the students will sow seeds at the greenhouse for both the school vegetable beds and the schools new native plants and butterfly garden. The goal of the club is to introduce students not only to the concept of creating a local food economy, but also to restoring a native habitat and protecting species diversity: the students will grow, from seed, rare varieties of Canadian tomatoes.

The grant will fund seeds and soils, trays and boxes, gardening tools and gardening gloves, native trees, shrubs and perennials in short, everything needed to introduce students to the idea that, as Hill says, land has value "beyond its importance in the creation of new housing."

With urban sprawl eating up farmland and native habitats, "there are few opportunities for children to learn about the nature of cities," says Hill. "The Sowers and Growers Club will help kids develop a strong connection to Torontos urban nature."

"Currently, no environmental club exists at our school, the only high school in town," says Laura Mitchell, who teaches at Michipicoten High School in Wawa, On. However, Mitchell feels there is a great need to educate Wawa youth about environmental issues and empower them to make a difference. "Its my dream to create a student-driven environmental team."

Thanks to this grant, that dream will be coming true. The first project for the 15 students on the Michipicoten Green Team will be restoring the schools courtyard, which, says Mitchell, "is not used and locked up due to the state of the area."

The team will clean up the debris in the courtyard, install a sitting area and construct a composter. The grant will fund building materials for the composter and green bins for the schools food room and cafeteria.

The grant will also give the team the means to start a vegetable garden and plant native vegetation in the courtyard. "Since our school has a large aboriginal population," says Mitchell, "the plant species chosen will also correlate with Ojibway culture." For instance, in addition to thyme and oregano, herbs that will be used in food classes, the team will also plant sweetgrass and sage, which are "significant to the Ojibway culture  theyre used for smudging."

Mitchells plan is that as they dig the plants, seeds and organic waste into the soil, the Michipicoten Green Team will restore more than the courtyard. "Through the projects we will plant the seeds of sustainability into the minds and behaviours of our students."

By the year 2015, the City of Greater Sudbury, ON., aims to become a leader in sustainable mobility, according to Russ Thompson, who teaches at Northeastern Elementary School in Garson, a Sudbury community. "Northeastern Elementary students will play a key role in helping Greater Sudbury achieve this goal through its bicycle rehabilitation program," says Thompson.

The school has just started a Tech Program, which introduces students to working with tools and buildings things. "As part of that program," says Thompson, "grade 7 and 8 students will refurbish donated bicycles and then have them donated to children whose families cant afford to provide them with a bicycle." The grant will pay for the paint and parts the students need to fix up the bikes.

The program will have a number of benefits, says Thompson. It will give a second life to bicycles that might otherwise end up in landfill, help Sudbury reduce its carbon footprint and raise student awareness of the importance of those actions.

By offering a hands-on learning experience, the program will also raise the opportunities for the children involved. "Students who may potentially be at risk of not succeeding at school now find their niche," says Thompson.

Plus, theyll make a positive difference in the lives of the children who get the bikes by giving them healthy transportation. "Northeastern Elementary is always looking for opportunities for our students to demonstrate paying it forward," says Thompson, "and I believe this program does just that."

"Spartan Youth Radio is Canadas only high-school podcast radio station," says teacher Jayson Stewart of the program he runs at Espanola High School in Espanola, ON. "We teach high school students how to use digital media to communicate with the world."

"Espanola High School is located in a remote community in northern Ontario," explains Stewart. "Pulp and paper, mining and hunting are three of our largest employers. We feel that our voices, our stories and our impressions of global issues must be shared with the world."

According to Stewart, Spartan Youth Radio, which goes by the nickname SYR, already has a strong social and global focus, having interviewed author Margaret Atwood, "suvivorman" Les Stroud and jungle explorer Lawrence Poole about environmental issues.

With help from the grant, which will buy a camera and lighting kit, Spartan Youth Radio will be expanding its focus and establishing the Green Stories Project. SYRs 15 students will write, film and produce informative and engaging video documentaries about global, national and local environmental issues.

"These mini-documentaries will be made available, for free, to any school organization that would like to use them," says Stewart, "to learn about the issues facing our planet today and what practical things young people can do to minimize their ecological footprint."

"It was the manufacturing industry that taught me to look for the value in materials that were seen as waste," says Chris Palaro, now a technological studies teacher at St. Josephs High School in Barrie, ON., but formerly an industrial electrician in the construction and manufacturing industries.

That real-world experience prompted Palaro to initiate the schools Recyclable and Recoverable Wood project, which will involve all 150 or so students who use St. Josephs wood shop. The school is on the northern edge of Barrie and, according to Palaro, many students come from a rural setting. "The schools location will provide us with a great opportunity to partner with local landscape companies, conservation authorities and city utilities."

Palaro plans to invite those partners to donate logs and large tree branches that would normally be chipped and dumped at the local landfill. With the help of the grant, the school will buy a compact sawmill. Then, as Palaro explains, "St. Josephs will take logs and branches that would have been turned into wood chips and teach students to turn the wood into lumber." Using the lumber, students will build furniture.

"Students will discover materials that are looked upon as waste in one process can be exactly what are needed to complete another process," says Palaro, a concept that is the cornerstone to all recycling programs. And, he adds, "If students fully understand the recycle program theyre more likely to buy into it."

"People and animals need to share the space within a city," says Dineen Brace, a teacher at Thornwood Public School in Mississauga, ON., Canadas sixth largest city and one its fastest growing. Nevertheless, Brace says "We want some wildlife in our school community, not just in rural areas."

This school year, Thornwood is undergoing the process to become certified by Ontario EcoSchools, and greening school grounds is one of the key areas for certification and, says Brace, "we are looking to incorporate urban wildlife stewardship into our greening plan."

"The front of our school is a wonderful place to welcome our community," says Brace, and the plan is to turn that space into a place that welcomes not only the people but also the wild creatures in the community. "Particularly important to us are bees, butterflies and birds  the three Bs. These creatures not only beautify our space, but pollinate our trees. Without them we cannot survive."

Brace and her group of 30 Grade 5 students have helped to plan the garden and research suitable plants, which the grant will provide funds to buy, such as coreopsis, beebalm, weigela and tiger eyes. "The plants were picked specifically to be attractive to bees, butterflies and birds," Brace says.

The garden, which the students will maintain, will bloom from early spring to late fall, "providing a consistent supply of flowers to our visiting wildlife," says Brace, creating, in her words, "a student-friendly space where urban wildlife and humans can co-exist."

"Certain species of butterfly native to Ontario are struggling due to urbanization, global warming and deforestation," says Darren Sims, a teacher at Agnes Taylor Public School in Brampton, Ontario. "We, as a staff, want to raise awareness of this fact and try to guide students into becoming stewards for the environment and advocates for native species within our community,"

To nurture native butterfly species on school grounds, the school assigned its fifth graders to help design a butterfly garden in a highly visible area: the side of the school where buses drop off students.

The design calls for paths laid out with walking stones and stumps for students to sit on so the garden can be used as an outdoor classroom. It also details a wide variety of butterfly-attracting plants, including purple coneflower, bee balm, buddleia, dogwood and meadowsweet, all of which will be bought with funds from this grant.

Sims says that the five ECO team teachers who are overseeing the project want, down the line, to use the garden as an instructional tool. They're also hoping that, eventually, the school will be able to raise butterflies in order to tag them and trace their migration.

"We'll know this project is a success," says Sims, "if we see native species of butterfly visiting our garden," but also, he says, "if we give every student in our school the opportunity to help with its completion."

"I'm the Student Success teacher at Barrie Central Collegiate," says Daryl O'Brien. "I work with students at risk of not succeeding at school. Firebird Community Cycle is one of our programs to keep students engaged."

Firebird Community Cycle is a student-run bike shop that operates out of what O'Brien calls a derelict small engines classroom. Working with scavenged tools and equipment during lunchtimes, the program has already managed to put dozens of disadvantaged students on the road.

It's also put students on the path to green living. "Firebird Community Cycle is a great vehicle to promote environmental awareness by teaching students unique ways of reducing their carbon footprint," says O'Brien. "By working with donations of unwanted bikes from the community, we divert garbage from the landfill."

The grant will allow Firebird Community Cycle to significantly increase its capacity, with funds earmarked for tools, parts, and ecologically responsible disposal of old tires and unusable metal waste.

The grant will also mean Firebird Community Cycle can provide a more effective work environment for its participants. "While this program promotes recycling and emissions-free transportation," says O'Brien, "it also provides students with the opportunity to develop the hard technical skills required to maintain bicycles that would otherwise end up in a landfill."

"The environmental impacts of our food system are numerous, including the carbon footprint of transporting food around the world, soil and water degradation through pesticide use and loss of biodiversity, to name a few," says Linda Beale, the principal of Brant Ave. Public School in Guelph, Ontario.

Beale believes it's important for communities to reconnect with where food comes from and how it's grown. She also believes that involving children in that learning is critical. That's why Brant Ave. P.S. will be partnering with a network called the Guelph Wellington Food Round Table to establish a community garden on school grounds.

A community garden is traditionally a parcel of land shared by residents to grow edible plants, but in this case it will be the joint responsibility of the neighbourhood and the school. The emphasis, says Beale, "is on teaching children and youth about where their food comes from and how agricultural systems impact the environment."

The grant will fund the start-up of the garden, from soil tests to gardening tools, seeds to sheds and composting bins. "Children will have the opportunity to learn about all aspects of food," says Beale, "from seed to table."

As they work in the garden, the children will be nurturing more than food, though. They'll also be helping to build community. "Food is important for forming bonds amongst people," says Beale. "Brant's neighbourhood garden will bring people together to work collaboratively, meet each other and learn alongside their children about our food system."

"Our schoolyard," says Maryse Mallet-Sinnis, a teacher at cole Sacr-Coeur in Georgetown, Ontario, "is flat and empty. Only a few trees border it. Greening our schoolyard is a necessity."

That's where Envirofolie comes in. Thanks to 15 grade five students who want to help the environment and came up with ideas for how to do it, the entire K-grade six school will be involved in Envirofolie, a project to green their schoolyard and build local biodiversity by creating a butterfly garden.

With funds provided by the grant, the school will buy trees and flowers to create a welcoming habitat for butterflies, other insects and animals " even bats. Each class will be responsible for planting and taking care of one tree, and three classes will focus on planting and tending butterfly-friendly flowers.

"Students were made aware that the Monarch butterflies have fewer and fewer places to eat, rest and lay their eggs," says Mallet-Sinnis, "and they found it important to build a butterfly garden for that purpose." One group has started to raise butterfly larvae, while another is growing flowers from seeds. A third group, looking toward true diversity of life in the butterfly garden, is building bat boxes.

Mallet-Sinnis says Envirofolie is a valuable teaching tool. "It has been proven that learning that is hands-on is better retained. Our students prove it to us because they want to plant in the garden, they want to watch the plants grow and they want to learn why we do all this."

"Mmmm, fresh tomato, basil and cucumber salad as an afternoon snack!" Benot Alexandre Bergevin teaches physical education and health at Jean-Paul II, an elementary school in Stittsville, a suburb of Ottawa. That tasty salad is what he's asking his students to imagine as an outcome of the school's composting initiative.

"Le compost c'est de changer les collations en vgtation" ("to compost is to change snacks into growth") will eventually implement a full composting system in four schools of the Ottawa French Catholic School Board. The grant will further the existing composting program at Jean-Paul II and set it up as a model for the school board.

The implementation is simple, says Bergevin. Eight-student green teams set up a central composter and distribute compost containers to all classrooms. The grant will buy the composting tools but the rest will be up to the students: a few simple daily operations that will transform their lunch and snack leftovers into black earth.

"Perhaps," says Bergevin, "the rich fertile earth will be the best solution for a school garden that can produce healthy organic treats for the students."

Because of the grant, Bergevin says, more than 600 children will have the opportunity to compost their biodegradable waste every day at school. The initiative, he says, "allows the students to be responsible for the compost and see the huge garbage reduction for themselves."

Bergevin believes most of the students will share their green tips with their families. "The potential outreach of this project is huge."

"Our new school grounds are currently all mud," says Rob Fitzgerald, a teacher at Lions Oval Public School in Orillia, Ontario. The school had its official grand opening at the beginning of June, 2010, and has already formed a green team that's partnering with the parent council. Their goal is to raise money to transform the muddy grounds into a vibrant green area with grass, trees and an outdoor learning space.

The grant will buy materials for raised flowerbeds, birdhouses and bat boxes, all of which are being designed and constructed by the 20-member student green team. The team will label the indigenous plants in three languages (English, French and Ojibwe) and will tend to them. The grant will also buy stones for the rock garden and for a circle of seating, and compost buckets for the outdoor composter.

The composter is a key element of the project. "Students will manage the collection of compost and recyclable materials," says Fitzgerald, and the green team "will motivate others to join in and do their best."

One way they'll do that is with prizes. "We will track each room's success with using their composting and recycling buckets weekly and award the Lions Oval Glimmering Globe monthly to a classroom that cares," says Fitzgerald. "It is essential that we model good choices if we hope to influence the students."

"We have built two solar heaters for our portable," says Susan Ragaisis, a teacher at Mother Teresa High School in Nepean, Ontario. "We're currently recording results and they're working amazingly! We expect them to pump out enough heat on a sunny day to automatically shut off the electric heat that typically heats the portable."

The heaters are made of recycled aluminum pop cans that are painted black to boost the ability of the sun to heat the air inside them. As the hot air rises, a fan powered by solar panels pushes it into the portable.

"Our students are completely engaged in this activity and are excited about the possibility of all of our board portables having these solar heaters to reduce our ecological footprint," says Ragaisis.

Given that the seventh grade curriculum includes an energy unit that looks at heat, energy transfer, and renewable resources, "this project ties in perfectly with the curriculum and allows students to feel they are making a significant difference for our future."

The grant will provide the funds to buy enough materials for 10 more MT-Can Solar Heaters, which will engage all grade seven classes in the project. "We'd like to demonstrate to our board that we can teach about the environment and help it at the same time," says Ragaisis.

Ragaisis also sees the project helping the board's bottom line. "The exponential fossil fuel savings from this project would be huge if this project takes the direction we envision it taking."

"Our school is so grateful for the WWF -Canada Green Community School Grant and anticipate the environmental opportunity this money will bring to better our school community and environment with the MT-Can Solar Heater. Now our students at Mother Teresa will not just read about this kind of project in books, but experience it hands on and be a part of these environmental initiatives."

"Our outdoor classroom has been planned for a space that was previously an unused baseball diamond," says Gail Blackman, a teacher at Ross Doan public school in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

The school wants to transform the vacant playing field into what Blackman calls "an oasis of biodiversity in our schoolyard, where students will be able to learn firsthand about nature and the environment."

The school has already raised funds to buy seven large, recycled armour stones. "Sitting on these strategically placed stone benches, students will be able to celebrate nature at its best," says Blackman, envisioning the completed garden, where shady native trees and gardens of drought-resistant flowers and shrubs will shelter indigenous birds and insects and provide a habitat for small creatures.

The grant will allow the school, which had run out of funds for the outdoor classroom project, to buy topsoil, sod, seeds and plants. Once the area is landscaped, "maintenance will be everyone's responsibility," says Blackman, "and frequent use by all classes, as well as our onsite daycare, will be encouraged throughout all school seasons."

The school plans to use its outdoor classroom not only for learning about nature, but also for group and independent reading, drama presentations and school celebrations. The Town of Richmond Hill will be invited to use it for summer camps. Says Blackman, "Our outdoor classroom will benefit our school and community all year round."

"At St Gerard Majella, we would like to take more responsibility for the Humber River," says Franca Tantalo-Forte, the principal of the Toronto Catholic school, speaking specifically about the section of river bank that runs the length of the school property.

"The area experiences heavy use," says Tantalo-Forte, "and the negative impact of this is abundantly clear, both in the water and on the river bank, which are suffocating with debris and garbage."

St. Gerard Majella's project, Rivers Alive and River Bank Rehabilitation, will involve all 200 students, from kindergarteners to eighth graders, in a five-phase initiative. The grant will support all five phases, including clean-up sessions, weir building, the reintroduction of indigenous plants to help prevent soil erosion on the river bank, and monitoring and reporting on the fish the school has raised and released in the river over the past five years.

According to the school's Carmel Preyra, the grant supports both the project and the work being done at St. Gerard Majella. "It's not just about the curriculum for learning, but a commitment for living as responsible citizens in a manner that protects and sustains all natural systems and life on this sacred planet," says Preyra. "We want to nurture our students so that they have the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to have a deep understanding that all life on the planet is distinct and independent, yet connected by a fragile link that makes us all interdependent."

"Our school is blessed with two acres of green space," says Tim Hundey, a teacher at Stephen Central Public School in Crediton, Ontario, near the southern tip of Lake Huron. "Our hope is to convert some areas that are not heavily traveled into a native plant oasis."

The oasis will be called the "Pollinator's Retreat" because the project is intended to provide a variety of plants that meet the nectar needs of butterflies, bees and maybe even hummingbirds. "The students have researched the plight of many pollinators," says Hundey, "and know they would benefit from an accessible and healthy meal."

Money from the grant will buy the pollinators' food sources " such flowering plants as sedum, aster, rudbekia, yarrow and echinacea " but the 27 grade eight students will be the main labourers on the project. "They will do the digging, turning of the soil, mixing of the topsoil and planting of the plants," says Hundey. "They will see how relatively easy it is to create a small oasis for vital pollinators."

As the students get older, Hundey believes, "this may lead to young adults who take an interest in environmental issues and stand up for positive change." So, while this project will definitely benefit pollinators in the short term, it will also, in the long term, make a difference in the lives of the students themselves.