Expanding environmental and outdoor education opportunities in School District No. 46 was the core subject as teachers, administrators and school trustees brainstormed with community members on June 10.
More than 50 people attended the environmental and outdoor education community forum held Monday evening in the Chatelech Secondary School foyer.
Serenaded by the all-teacher folk band Sweet Cas-cadia, participants offered up ideas to provide more support for place-based learning and nature studies in the school district.
The forum was an outgrowth of the district's recently formed environmental committee.
This is one of the first things we wanted to do, said superintendent Patrick Bocking, who sits on the committee along with teachers Jenny Groves and Jamie Mani, vice-principal Richard Biel and principal Barry Krangle.
In his opening remarks, school board chair Silas White listed some of the organizations represented in the room the Sunshine Coast Conservation Asso-ciation, the Jellyfish Project, Transportation Choices, Iris Griffith Centre, One Straw Society, and the Sunshine Coast Regional District and said the forum was about sharing ideas.
It's also about generating a network to continue sharing ideas and putting them into action in the areas that will yield the greatest benefit for our future and also our present, White said.
Ideas from participants were recorded at each table and will be reviewed by the environmental committee, Bocking said.
They ranged from resident Rick O'Neill's proposal for amphibian, mammal and bird habitat workshops to suggestions from teachers to revamp high school timetables and make paperwork easier for field trips.
Participants also compiled a long list of possible field-trip destinations on the Coast.
Major initiatives already on the way, Bocking noted, include developing and expanding the nature program at Davis Bay Elementary School for the next school year and launching an outdoor education pilot program at Chatelech in 2014.
