One of Cochrane’s most environmentally friendly schools plans to dedicate a week to ensuring the health of Mother Nature by hosting a slate of events from April 24 to 28 to mark Earth Week.
Kara Vincent, a Grade 3 teacher at Glenbow Elementary, said she and several other teachers at the school run what she calls an “eco squad,” which leads different forms of environmental initiatives throughout the year.
“We have a group of about 30 Grade 3 and 4 students that we work with as our leadership students for environmental initiatives,” Vincent said. “We’ve done a few projects already this year.”
The projects include working alongside Jade Janzen, a local high-school student who runs the not-for-profit Lives with Less Plastic who will provide leadership for the students.
They also created bags out of old T-shirts.
Vincent added the Eco Squad has also made good-on-one-side paper bins (or GOOS bins) for all the classrooms in the school to help reduce their paper waste.
“Glenbow Elementary has had a long history with different kinds of environmental initiatives,” Vincent said. “We’ve had annual garbage pick-up days for years, we have a community garden on site that all the students participate in, planting and harvesting in the spring and fall, and compost and paper recycling.”
From faculty, staff, and even students throughout the years, there is always a push for environmental stewardship inside and out of the classroom at Glenbow Elementary.
This year, Vincent said there will be five major initiatives for Earth Week, which follows Earth Day on April 22.
On Monday, students will learn the ins-and-outs of e-waste recycling.
“So, the Grade 4 leadership students have connected with the Cochrane Eco Centre, and they’re getting the collection bin from them and families at Glenbow are able to bring in older, broken, unused, or out-dated small electronics,” Vincent said.
The students will collect them, and will then learn about how they can be recycled, rather than thrown in the garbage.
Tuesday will be a dedicated outside learning day, when students will participate in various outdoor activities.
On Wednesday, the school will participate in an event to promote the idea of reusable water bottles over single-use bottles, with an event called the Great Gulp.
“We’ve done statistics around if every student brought a new water bottle everyday to school, we’d use 2,000 water bottles a week,” Vincent said. “So, looking at the data and how much we’re able to reduce our footprint with reusable water bottles and lunch items, at 2:10 p.m., we’ll all be going to the field and everyone will be taking a big gulp from their reusable water bottle.”
Thursday will see a community clean-up, as students in different grades visit different areas within walking distance of the school, participating in garbage pickup and spring cleaning.
For the last event on Friday, the school will have an Earth Hour from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m., when classes will have to not use any electricity as they learn about being energy efficient.
In addition to the Earth Week programming, Glenbow Elementary will also be participating in the Canada wide Eco Schools program. Through this program, schools across Canada report different data on how eco-friendly they are, and receive a rank based on their how many actions they submit.
With a strong sense of championing environmentalism at the school, Vincent said she would like to emphasize the leaders that can be found at Glenbow Elementary.
“It wouldn’t be as successful as it was and we wouldn’t be able to do all that we’re doing with out so many people that are keen and willing to participate,” she noted.
