Teachers on Texada Island are preparing for the school year by sticking their hands in dirt.
Rhonda Gordon is Texada Elementary School’s principal and teaches kindergarten to grade two. Michael Sanford, the school’s other teacher, has grades three through seven. Together they are looking at starting classroom gardens for the school’s 34 students.
“One of the things we’re doing this year to focus on social responsibility is creating classroom gardens to teach sustainability,” said Gordon.
Each year teachers have to try new approaches to the curriculum and the theme of social responsibility because they have the same students.
“In most classrooms [in other schools] kids are at different levels academically anyway,” she said. “So teaching this way is not as challenging as one might assume. Even if you had a straight grade four class, there’s no way that 30 grade-four students are all reading at a grade-four level.”
She explained that the new curriculum coming from the ministry of education is much more student-focused, which makes teaching classrooms like hers easier. “It’s great for us because it’s already what we’ve been doing,” she added.
Gordon and Sanford are meeting with Texada Agricultural Group (TAG) founder Tom Read to learn about composting to create soil and what a classroom garden would look like.
“That’s a big part of what we’re doing this week about getting ready,” she said. “Other than that, it’s all the usual preparing.”
One thing that is a little different about Texada elementary is that the school provides supplies for the students.
Gordon said the policy cuts down on wasted supplies. She explained that in the past the school would send the list of necessary supplies home and half the students would come to school missing items or parents would have to substitute items because they could not find them.
“It’s a such a relief for parents and teachers,” she said.
Another project that Gordon said she and Sanford are preparing for this year is to have their students research an important historical Texada resident, with help from the Texada Heritage Society, which operates a museum next to the school.
This year Gordon said that TAG will begin construction of a commercial kitchen, for community use, at the school, which will give students “rich and diverse learning opportunities,” she said.
