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Portrait of an eco school

Get tips on making your school greener. How students at one Calgary school are getting their hands dirty to make a difference

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Originally published in Today's Parent April 2011

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Hands busy ripping old flyers into narrow strips, nine-year-old Sahail Atwal explains why he likes his grade four classroom’s vermicomposting bin. “You can put in orange peels, apple cores and banana peels with the paper, and the red wigglers turn it all into dirt you can use in your garden.”

Sahail’s teacher, Joyce Tysseland, brought vermicomposting into her classroom seven years ago as part of a science unit. “They’re learning to recycle, to be aware of the amount of garbage they’re producing, to be aware that if they’re careful, they can produce a very valuable product from garbage,” says Tysseland.

The bin full of organic-waste-devouring worms is more than just a science lesson for the students at Calgary’s O.S. Geiger School. It’s counted in the tally of more than 1,000 environmental projects the school has completed since 2004 in its effort to achieve Earth School designation in the Green Schools Canada program.

Created by the national not-for-profit Society, Environment and Energy Development Studies (SEEDS) Foundation, Green Schools Canada is an environmental stewardship program for elementary to high schools. “We want to help teachers promote student literacy, personal action and societal responsibility when it comes to energy, sustainability and the environment,” says Diane Field, executive director of SEEDS. More than 6,000 schools have completed over one million environmental class projects to communicate about or to enhance the environment in the past decade.

At O.S. Geiger, physical education teacher Dustin Turner heads up the Green Schools initiative. “Each time a project of any kind is done, the student or teacher brings me a completed project sheet, which is saved in our Green Schools binder,” says Turner. “There are projects we do each year, and those we do just once.” Students participate in litterless snack days, pick up garbage from the schoolyard after recess, and build bird feeders from recycled materials to earn points toward the designation.

Adorning the hallways is the kids’ artwork illustrating the various eco-friendly projects they’ve completed, and handcrafted posters touting the importance of caring for the environment. The school is taking its message out to the community as well; one popular project from last year saw students decorate a fast-food chain’s takeout bags with conservation messages. The bags were then given out to hundreds of customers in the neighbourhood.

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