A hands-on water conservation project for students at Ralph McCall School has garnered a local teacher accolades and a $5,000 grant.
Nancy Cole, a Grade-2 teacher at Ralph McCall School, was one of just six teachers from across the province to receive an Innovation in Teaching Award this year from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA). The award comes with a $5,000 grant to support classroom projects that promote STEM-based learning – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“You kind of don’t think much about it, but then everyone starts telling you that you deserve [the award] and the project is perfect for it, and then it’s more of a shocker,” she said.
Cole and her colleague Michelle Bechthold, a Grade-3 teacher at the school, will use the grant to expand their classrooms’ ongoing water conservation project.This year, to teach their students about the City of Airdrie’s new water conservation bylaw, Cole and Bechthold created an interactive project for their students to design structures that would harvest, redirect and re-use rainwater.
“We gave them a scenario that our playground was flooding and we had to cover it…and move the water away from the playground,” Cole said. “Some kids made a funnel system, some kids did domes, [and] some kids figured out slanted structures and that we had to put gutters on the side to drain and direct the water.”
Designing the structures and creating the prototypes not only gave students valuable engineering insight, according to the two teachers, but also educated them on the issue of water over-usage. Cole said teaching the students about the City’s waterworks bylaw before designing their prototypes was a great way to give the project some real-life relevancy.
The $5,000 from APEGA, according to Cole, opens up opportunities for the teachers to expand on the project next year.
“[This year], our prototypes were made of tin foil, cardboard and duct tape,” she said. “Now, we actually get to buy supplies and bring in experts. We can go on field trips, if we want to.”
After creating the prototypes, students welcomed members of the City’s Water Services department to the school June 13. The professionals looked over the students’ prototypes and provided expertise on how to improve the designs.
“What we like to do is give kids real-life problems, and get them to interact in a local way,” Bechthold said. “Learning becomes way more authentic, that way. Kids can interact with these real experts and feel they have a place and say in their own communities.”
Another possibility for the project's future, according to Bechthold, is to collaborate with Rocky View Schools’ new The Farm project – an agriculture-based learning initiative to teach Grade 9 and 10 students about sustainable farming, on a real farm northwest of Airdrie.
“The idea is, those Grade 9 and 10 students [in the program] could build a greenhouse with the prototypes that students in our classes designed,” Bechthold said. “This could be a legacy for future generations coming [into the program] and learning how we can promote sustainability in Airdrie, specifically.”
Bechthold said she and Cole are investigating to see if collaborating with The Farm project would be an option, but won’t have an answer until mid-September.
