Green School Grants - Saskatchewan

Jubilee Community School in Meadow Lake, SK., has an active Garden Club, even though its members are young, since the school goes from Kindergarten to Grade 4. Nonetheless, the Garden Club is at work during recess and over the noon hour, from April to June and then in September and October. According to Cally Daongam, the Community School Coordinator, "typically, about 25 to 30 students help out on a daily basis."

For the 2011 Jubilee Green Thumbs Project, the Garden Club has three goals. The first is to add eaves troughs and rain barrels, which the grant will fund, to the existing garden shed. "Water conservation is something all students should learn about," says Daongam, adding that "the water collected will also help sustain our garden plants." The club grows root vegetables to subsidize the school's nutrition program and will be adding to that initiative with fruit trees the grant funds will buy.

The club's second goal is landscaping improvement. The plan is to dig up the area around the school bulletin board and beautify it with flowering plants bought with grant funds. "Improving and maintaining the environment around Jubilee School is something the students will be proud of," Daongam believes. The club's third goal is to create, with more plants bought with grant money, an area to serve as an outdoor classroom.

Daongam says the classroom will enhance teaching possibilities and, given the delight the students have shown in the school's existing green spaces, "we expect them to be avid, enthusiastic learners."

"Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, followed 238 students and determined that 'a combination of healthful food, school gardening and culinary education increased students' nutrition knowledge and broadened their taste for and consumption of fruits and vegetables," quotes Barry Tysdal, an EA and job coach at Peacock Collegiate in Moose Jaw, Sask.

Tysdal is hoping his school's project, the Learning Garden, will have a similar effect on the students involved in it. "The interactive garden classroom will be developed and used primarily by teen parents, students with special needs, students living independently, at-risk youth and students with sensory needs," says Tysdal.

The goal of the garden is to expand the learning and life opportunities for those students. "It's intended to help address hunger by providing students with further education and access to real food," says Tysdal, "and to provide hands-on learning of independent living skills."

The grant will provide money for what's needed to prepare and plant the site and set up composting and rain capture. The students will provide the elbow grease. "They'll be active learners," says Tysdal, "participating in the process from seed to table."

Tysdal hopes that by working to protect the environment, the students will develop a greater sense of belonging to the community. He says working the garden together will feed not only the mind and body of the students, but also the soul, "by connecting them with the traditional prairie spirit of cooperation with one's neighbours."

"Even a stone can provide a home for many creatures of our environment," says Audrey Hrycak, "and should not be overlooked."

Hrycak, a Grade 5 teacher at Yorkdale Central School in Yorkton, Sask., is part of a team developing the Yorkdale Royal Gardens as a habitat for wildlife. "Our efforts," Hrycak says, "will ensure a refuge for a variety of living things."

In addition to 45 Grade 5 students, 63 Grade 7 students, and 5 teachers, the project team includes a naturalist who specializes in bats, a member of the Yellowhead Bird Association, and the Yorkton Horticultural Society.

"The project will introduce students to nurturing our environment through the experience of creating ecosystems for birds, bats and butterflies," Hrycak says. The students will help plan, construct, assemble and maintain bird, bat and butterfly houses out of materials bought with grant money. The grant will also fund bird and butterfly feeders, and the plants that will attract the creatures to the garden.

"The project will help the students understand the relationships between vegetation, insects and birds," Hrycak says. She and the other teachers plan to have the students conduct field studies to observe, record and analyze the components of their local ecosystem, and help them understand how it functions on a macro level as well as a micro one. "It will be beneficial to have a site to illustrate the ecological organization of life within the biosphere."

"Once the learning has occurred," Hrycak says, "the students can easily take the process home to create similar ecological refuges in their own environments."

"The school I teach at is an inner-city school with a high number of Aboriginal students," says Rod Figueroa of St. Michael Community School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "Aside from poverty, many of our students struggle with issues such as low attendance."

Figueroa says he's been concerned with environmental issues for many years and thought it would be a great idea to build an outdoor classroom as an alternative learning environment. The K-grade 8 school is undertaking a beautification of its grounds, and the outdoor classroom will become the focus.

"The classroom itself will be a circle of large stones," Figueroa says, "much like a medicine wheel." The circle will be surrounded by trees and shrubs, which the grant will enable the school to buy. "We want to include many native plant species and invite traditional First Nations elders to talk about the plants and their uses."

The goal of the project is to involve students, parents and guardians in a planning initiative that will result not only in an enriched learning environment, but also improved air quality, increased wildlife habitat, and shade and shelter. The outdoor classroom will become a resource for the whole community.

"Outdoor education and play enhance a child's learning and provide not only educational but social benefits," says Figueroa. "The sense of ownership that children gain from being responsible for their school can be extremely beneficial and have a marked effect on a child's attitude toward school, themselves, other people and their surroundings."