1. Celebrate Earth Day, New Westminster Style

In celebration of Earth Day, April 22nd, the City of New Westminster in British Columbia is teaming up with School District #40 and GreenLearning to encourage Grade 5 and 6 students to take action on energy conservation. The City is providing all schools with EnerAction Lesson #2, Acting on Energy, a GreenLearning lesson designed to meet learning outcomes in social studies, language arts and fine arts. Individual and class winners of the Energy: Save Today for Tomorrow poster project will be recognized by the City and win prizes that promote environmental responsibility and renewable energy.

In EnerAction's Acting on Energy lesson, students explore daily energy use by acting out skits for a number of real-life scenarios. They think critically about their own energy use and then illustrate, in a class banner or in individual posters, their personal commitments to acting on energy conservation.

How can GreenLearning help your class celebrate Earth Day? Consider other EnerAction lesson plans designed for Grades 4 to 7. Or increase environmental literacy and responsibility among your students with one of GreenLearning's many other resources.

2. Ontario Students Find Their Voice With eCards

Lisa Santandrea and Ronan Heffernan of the London Catholic District School Board have uniquely adapted eCards in a project they call Finding Our Voice. They chose eCards as an alternative to a paper-and-pencil approach to learning about the environment, and before long they discovered that students were learning about much more than the environment.

Lisa explains: "As the students began to [research] an environmental topic, we began to realize as a class, that the work that we were doing could have a real impact.  The activity quickly shifted from a simple research and writing activity into something that they truly cared about and began to become invested in.Our students began to consider the idea of having a voice — having a say in helping to raise awareness about the environmental concerns in the world that they are living in. 

It was amazing to observe the children become impassioned and engaged as they began to realize that THEY could make a difference. From this powerful beginning, the students wrote a mission statement that would guide their eCards work."

STUDENT MISSION STATEMENT:  When communicating messages about the environment and other issues we care about, we are asking people to change — change the way that they think and change the way they behave. Our focus as eCard writers and graphic artists is to motivate our audiences to want to change. Our words and images need to convince them to see things differently, to make different choices, to set different goals, or to take different actions.

Ronan and GreenLearning unveiled Finding Our Voice at the Environmental Education Symposium of the Ontario Ministry of Education in Toronto last month. The Symposium coincided with the Ministry's release of Acting Today–Shaping Tomorrow, a Policy Framework for Environmental Education in Ontario Schools.

Contact Gordon Harrison to learn more about the Finding Our Voice project.

3. Upcoming Workshops

You can join a professional development workshop coming to a school near you or request a workshop for your school district. To learn more about our workshops, contact the GreenLearning Director in your region.

• Surrey (eCards): two-part workshop series, March 31 and May 5. Contact Selina Millar.
• Richmond (eCards): April 1. Contact Rosalind Poon.
• Victoria (EnerAction): in collaboration with Wild BC at Connections 2009 Power of Relationships conference, April 17. Register now. 
• Burnaby (Science 10 Climate Change): in collaboration with Science World at BC Science Teachers Association (BCSTA) Spring into Science 2009, April 18. Register now. 
• Jasper (eCards): ATA Global, Environment and Outdoor Education Conference (GEOEC) Conference, April 24. Register now. 
• Surrey (eCards): Surrey Teachers Association (STA) Professional Development Day, Global Peace...The Possible Dream, May 1. Register beginning March 25th.
• Surrey (Science 10–Socials Studies 10): Surrey Teachers Association (STA) Professional Development Day, Global Peace...The Possible Dream, May 1. Register beginning March 25th.

4. Teachable Moments

Thanks to those of you who shared your favourite GreenLearning experience with us last month.  The winners of our draw for an Earth ball are Nikki Gerrits, a Grade 5 teacher at Kamloops Christian School, and Sharon MacKenzie, Vice Principal of Calgary's Olympic Heights School. Congratulations to you both!

Nikki wrote to us about her class's experience with EnerAction Lesson #4, Walk a Mile in My Shoes: "My class and I traced our feet on green construction paper then went to earthday.net to find out our individual carbon footprints. We wrote on our feet:  If everyone in the world lived like me we would need ___ planets. My footprint is ___ hectares. Canada's footprint is 8.8 hectares. We should only be using 1.8 hectares per person."

"When my students saw that we should only use 1.8 hectares each, and they used 9 or 10, they were shocked! When they noticed that we needed more earths to continue to live in the manner we were living, they were very surprised and started to change their ways. They started bugging their parents to recycle more, to walk more, to drive less. We even held a NO GARBAGE DAY where we made sure we had no garbage in our class. Only recyclables and compost. All lunches came in containers, etc. [We also held a] NO ELECTRICITY DAY. We didn't use the lights, microwave, tv, cd player, electric pencil sharpener, etc. I wasn't even allowed to turn my computer on!"

Sharon wrote in about the exciting work that the Calgary Board of Education is doing with ENMAX and six pilot schools (one of them Olympic Heights) to install solar panels, photovoltaic cells and wind turbines. Click here to learn more. 

5. Redfish School of Change Draws Applicants From Three Continents

With applicants from Victoria to Halifax and from as far away as Europe and Africa, the Redfish School of Change is gearing up for an exciting first session, May 18–June 26.  In this unique field school accredited with the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies, participants travel from the mountains of BC's Slocan Valley to the marine coast of Vancouver Island while exploring strategies for creating ecological sustainability and social equity.

As a new program, Redfish School of Change is still accepting funding for student bursaries from generous organizations and individuals.

To learn more, visit http://www.schoolofchange.ca

6. What's My Password?

Can't remember your password?  Click here to get your GreenLearning password and access our resources.

7. Our Thanks

Thanks to Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP and to the Footprints Fund of the Tides Canada Foundation for their support of the outreach and delivery of GreenLearning programs in British Columbia.