Of the four schools in Waterloo Region that received the 2021-22 Tim Walker Memorial Award for Environmental Stewardship, three of them are in Cambridge.
The Waterloo District School Board's evaluation committee reviewed applications from twelve schools in the region to come up with this year's winners.
This year’s award recipients are Janet Metcalfe Public School in Kitchener, and Elgin Street Public School, Moffat Creek Public School, and Glenview Park Secondary School in Cambridge.
Criteria for the award include staff and student involvement, environmental stewardship, impact on student learning, fostering learning and engaging students, and environmental benefits.
In May 2006, the school board established the Tim Walker Memorial Award for Environmental Stewardship to honour the life of secondary school teacher Tim Walker and his contribution to education and environmental initiatives.
The annual award of $2,000 is equally distributed among four schools.
Elgin Street Public School was recognized for its project in vermicomposting, turning leftover organic and carbon waste into compost.
The goal is to show how vermicomposting can reduce waste while educating students about the importance of composting for the environment and food production.
It also teaches students how to nurture and care for an environment of microorganisms, and helps them to gain an understanding the role of healthy soil.
The school plans to expand the project to all classrooms and potentially provide “starter kits” for families to use at home.
The compost will be ‘harvested” at the end of the school year and distributed and offered to community gardens projects.
Moffat Creek Public School received an award for a bird feeding and nesting area at its forest school.
The goal is to create a connection between young people and the natural world around through outdoor learning and play.
This involves both structured and unstructured time in the forested area behind the school. The goal is to create an established bird feeding and nesting area.
By providing high quality feeders and nesting homes to help the birds in this area survive as well as prosper. Feeding birds helps students understand science concepts as well as, learn how important it is to identify, and care for the environment and its creatures.
The project at Glenview Park Secondary School involved the development of a Wellness Courtyard.
The school's new outdoor courtyard is connected to an indoor wellness room and has four main goals.
Those goals include providing improved mental health for students and staff in a safe outdoor space, providing an outdoor extension to the new entrance and foyer, providing a protected outdoor space for classes or small group gatherings, functions, and library activities, and offering a student-centred activity through all stages of the design, build and use.
This is the fifteenth year of the Tim Walker Award for Environmental Stewardship.
