Elementary students in Oro-Medonte tackle global issues
The students at Shanty Bay Public School may be short in stature but they have big ideas for tackling the planet’s most pressing issues.
As part of a program called Change Agents, students were challenged to pick a United Nations Global Goal and develop a plan to affect change in that area.
Some of the student projects on display at a June 19 expo included, that was distributed to elementary schools throughout the county, a fundraising campaign to provide clean drinking water and plans to address food insecurity in the county.
Maeve Celli, a Grade 4 student, decided to do something about hard-to-recycle plastics. She noticed many plastic writing utensils at her school were making their way into garbage cans.
“It’s just so sad to see all the waste going into the garbage,” Celli said.
She collected more than 1,000 pieces of plastic from her school and will be diverting them to a recycling company called TerraCycle. After she gave a presentation to the school, she learned a Grade 1 student had started their own collection efforts, which she said was a great feeling.
“I didn’t know I could inspire people to do things like that,” she said.
Students were encouraged to combine their topic with their passions, so Grade 5 student Nari Hwang decided to “smoosh” her two loves together: art and the environment.
Her art abstract art piece titled “Make Clean Water Happen” to show the effects of plastic pollution in bodies of water.
After showcasing her piece, students at the school were asked to take pledges on preventing plastic pollution in bodies of water.
“I really like the water, it gives me peace,” Hwang said when asked why it was an important topic to her. “I just feel so calm when I’m in it.”
Across the gym, Grade 5 student Caden Fowler had created a colourful display about coral reefs around the world.
Reefs, he said, occupy less than one per cent of the ocean but are home to more than 25 per cent of marine life. Another surprising fact he learned is that 35 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia has died off.
“It’s like an underwater rainforest,” Fowler said.
His project aims to educate people on how to prevent further damage to those underwater ecosystems.
Julie Johnson, a special education resource teacher at Shanty Bay Public School, organized the Change Agent program along with another teacher Heather Czarnota.
“They knocked it out of the park,” she said of the student projects.
The program is meant to help students develop collaboration, organizational, problem solving and empathy skills.
Johnson said they plan to continue the program, which received grants from the Ministry of Education and the Simcoe County District School Board for next year.
“This is really just the beginning for a lot of these projects,” she said.