Turtle Island Recycling client Windsor Crossing created a fabulous project this April to get local schools to improve their environmental report card by competing against each other for the title of “Greenest” school.
How Green is Your School? was an astounding success. Read what the Windsor Star had to say:
After winning a $10,000 cheque to build an outdoor classroom, some young Windsor environmentalists showed their green colours Wednesday by celebrating in true tree hugger fashion. Windsor’s Prince Edward Public School took the top prize in a competition fostering green ideas in honour of Earth Day. “I’m going to go hug a tree today,” said Sammy Langlois, 13, a Grade 7 Prince Edward student. “I’m excited, happy, the opposite of crappy.” Windsor Crossing gave out $20,000 to three schools as part of its How Green Is Your School? campaign. About 50 schools entered the contest by pitching environmental projects. A panel of judges whittled the entrants down to three. More than 100 students from the top three schools, along with some local politicians, showed up in an empty Windsor Crossing store space to hear who would be the greenest of them all. Queen Elizabeth school in Leamington took the second prize of $7,000, and Pavillon Des Jeunes in Belle River got $3,000 for third place.
Their plans also included outdoor learning areas. Prince Edward principal Janet Fairall said her school’s $10,000 prize will allow students to have a green sanctuary in their otherwise barren setting. It will include seats for classes, gardens of native tallgrass prairie, a veggie patch and pathways to bird feeders and butterfly and bat boxes. “Classes can go out, sit in nature, do science experiments, watch the wildlife come into the area,” she said. “We’re basically surrounded right now by concrete where they play. This provides an opportunity to go out and learn about nature. They can actually be involved in the planting, get their hands in the dirt, have that experience that many children don’t have in their daily lives. It brings that awareness too, or responsibility and ownership for the community around them.” The students were ready to cash their oversized cheque Wednesday and get things moving. “We just won $10,000, so we can finally put that plan into effect and see how future generations take that plan and what they can do,” said Weiyi Dai, 14. “Since we’re in the middle of the city, we don’t have much opportunity to get out. So we thought it would just be nice if we could just grab a whole bunch of people that are interested in making a good environment, and just simply making the world a better place.”
Written by Trevor Wilhelm, April 22 2009 © Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
Anne Jarvis: Outside learning enriches
BY ANNE JARVIS, WINDSOR STAR NOVEMBER 29, 2010
When I was a kid, I used to lie in the woods near our house and stare at the trees and sky. Forty years later, I still remember the wonder and the utter quiet of my spot in the leaves.
In this age of overscheduled kids and video games, few youngsters experience that any more.
But in Windsor and across North America and Europe, in an attempt to bring nature back to childhood, schools are transforming playgrounds from hard, hot expanses of blacktop and barren fields into natural oases of trees, gardens and rocks.
And they're finding something fascinating: Clear evidence that students learn more, perform better on tests, are more motivated and engaged and behave better in verdant outdoor classrooms.
At least seven schools in Windsor have planted outdoor classrooms in the last 18 months. General Brock on Sandwich Street was the latest. Staff and students planted 16 native trees, laid mulch around them and arranged quarry rocks in a circle to sit on. They study worms and insects, habitat and even do art.
It doesn't look like much yet, but already teacher Michele Sylvestre sees a difference.
"There's more excitement," she said. "They're more interested. They're taking more initiative to do things. They're investigating and observing. Their curiosity is piqued."
Prince Edward on Giles has a small woodland with native trees like dogwood and redbud, shrubs, a vegetable garden, birdhouses and bird feeders, quarry rocks and a wood chip path.
"Even Grades 7 and 8, they're different people when they're outside in nature," said teacher Susan Walker.
Students say things like, "We love our school. It's beautiful."
Now, they're planting their second classroom, a native tallgrass prairie.
Instead of a jungle gym, the new David Suzuki school is considering a small forest, a grass maze, maybe even a marsh, a hill with rocks built into it for climbing and a natural amphitheatre.
"It's nothing I had ever seen," vice-principal Kerry Green-Duren said of the architect's ideas. "It's not like anything we have in Windsor."
Some parents asked, "Where are the swings?" There are none.
Some neighbours worried about critters, "but we want that," said Green-Duren.
A seminal study in the U.S. showed that 92 per cent of students who have been in outdoor learning programs perform better than their peers in reading, writing, math, science and social studies.
Their ability to retain knowledge and skills improves significantly. Not only that, factors that can't be tested or measured but are critical to learning -- enthusiasm, engagement, creativity -- are also heightened.
In a study for the non-profit group Evergreen, some teachers speculated that the inspirational settings stimulate wonder and curiosity, prompting kids to do things like turning over rocks to see what's there. Learning comes alive when students can touch, smell and even taste the learning materials.
Some say it's the diverse and ever-changing environment where the unexpected just happens -- migrating birds fly over, storms develop. Others say the endless examples of interconnectedness enhance learning; studying temperature also leads to talk about sun and wind.
Some kids simply don't excel sitting at desks; but they flourish outside.
Scientists are studying another reason: attention restoration theory. This theory postulates that nature has a marvellous ability to restore concentration, enabling people to perform tasks better.
According to the theory, there are two types of attention, voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary attention, used to study or work, requires focus and energy and causes fatigue. Involuntary attention is when we're gently and effortlessly drawn to and absorbed by something. When our involuntary attention is engaged, it gives our direct attention a break. When we return to it, we're refreshed.
Nature, like watching clouds move across the sky or waves lap the shore, is especially good at capturing our involuntary attention.
Green playgrounds also change the way kids play, according to the Evergreen study.
The trees and rocks invite them to explore and use their imaginations, turning nooks and crannies into forts and hiding places.
And nature seems to soothe them. Despite an increase in aggressiveness and bullying in society, researchers, teachers and parents all see less fighting and vandalism and more respect, kindness and cooperation on green playgrounds.
One of the most compelling findings is that when teachers or parents provide children with a beautiful landscape, they see that as an expression of caring.
"It's a very provocative thought," says Cam Collyer of Evergreen.
Ultimately, children also come to appreciate the natural world and their place in it. One teacher in the Evergreen study reported that now, when there's a bug in the classroom, all the kids say, "Don't kill it!"
Ironically, kids today know more than ever about the environment, yet are less connected to it than ever, writes Richard Louv, who coined the phrase "nature deficit disorder," in his best-selling book Last Child in the Woods.
But just as they need proper nutrition and adequate sleep, he wrote, they also need contact with nature.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
No comments:
Post a Comment