“Students were eager to be involved in this one-of-a-kind project blessing the community as a whole,” said their teacher, Benita Shwaluk. 

Shoal Lake School connected with the University of Manitoba and Science Rendezvous’ Million Tree Project to plant 100 white spruce saplings on the east portion of the school track this September. 

Shwaluk didn’t link tree planting to any particular class subject. She felt the students’ efforts allowed for many valuable lessons. 

The 16 students used math to figure out how many trees each student would plant and how many rows were required to fit 100 trees in the allotted space. Spacing was discussed, the depth and width of the hole were estimated, and they learned that white spruce are quite tolerant of most soil types. 

They learned how the trees will add beauty to the school grounds; provide shade and a windbreak for activities on the track, soccer pitch and football gridiron; help with run-off and erosion control; clean the air; and promote biodiversity by providing habitat. 

From a town perspective, trees moderate temperatures. Trees improve mental health by reducing stress, and the view adds aesthetic beauty to a community. 

The students dug six holes each. 

“Along with bringing their own shovel or other form of digging tool, the young minds and strength assisted or complemented each other,” said Shwaluk. 

It took a team effort to get through thick clay and around the odd rock, but students were excited to improve the environment and leave their mark on the school for years to come. There were no complaints. 

The saplings measured eight to 12 inches at planting. If well looked after, the trees grow 13 to 24 inches in height per year. At maturity white spruce grow up to a height of 40 to 60 feet, with a spread of 10 to 20 feet. 

Shwaluk hopes most of the trees will reach heights over eight feet by the time these students graduate in 2026. 

The tree planting isn’t over. Shwaluk has put the school on a list for 200 more trees. 

“Looking ahead I’m hoping to work either with the same group or another group, as the focus will be planting trees around the community,” she said. 

“This was a wonderful way to get students engaged and learning outside in a hands-on experience,” Shwaluk said. “Digging a hole, planting a tree, and watching it grow helps not only our environment but teaches students to invest in a sustainable future.”

The post Shoal Lake students put backs and brains into tree planting appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

If rural families feel particularly pinched, they’re probably right. University of Manitoba researcher Susan Prentice said in rural and northern Manitoba, there is one childcare spot for every five kids. This is about half of what’s available in Winnipeg.

“In our area, daycares are little to none,” said one mother on a call with Manitoba Women in Agriculture and Food (MWAF) on Feb. 22.

The nearest daycare is 30 minutes away, she said. To get in, kids go on waiting lists and — she heard — might get in faster if you called and harassed the centre staff every day.

Instead, she takes her kids on the job when necessary.

“My day-to-day life is basically keeping them safe and being productive, which is very difficult,” she said.

She had planned to return to work on an off-farm job, but couldn’t justify the stress. Her kids would have to go to two different daycares.

Another woman on the call reported she had also turned down a good job because of childcare issues (though not recently).

A mother living in Winnipeg said she faced a one-year waiting list for her first child. At the time she was a student, and fortunately her professors were able to accommodate her so she didn’t lose all her classes or a whole year of school. She is an immigrant and had no family to rely on, she said.

Her second child got a daycare spot when he was almost a year old, but it was at a different daycare than his older sibling. After the birth of her third child, the woman gave up and took her children out of daycare. She opted to work part time instead.

Earlier this year, Keystone Agricultural Producers passed a resolution to lobby the province for better rural child care. KAP members told the Co-operator they relied on family and sometimes, when they couldn’t find child care, took kids along on the job — which they worried wasn’t safe, or fair to the children.

Attempts to solve

How best to care for Manitoba’s children has been debated for decades. In a “Timeline of child care in Manitoba,” the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba recalls that in 1987 the then NDP government made a call to the federal government for a national daycare program.

In 1989, a task force on childcare found a “severe shortage” of spaces. Over the next three decades, numerous committees and task forces studied the industry and restructured how it was run and funded. However, issues of lack of space have persisted.

“The problem basically is that we’ve been dealing for a long time with governments that aren’t willing to invest in building services because they still think, in general, it’s just a private family matter,” said Susan Prentice, a University of Manitoba professor who has done extensive research on child care in Canada.

“That makes a big problem,” she said.

In its November 2015 throne speech, the NDP government pledged to “create a universally accessible childcare system with 12,000 additional spaces.”

In early 2016, the Manitoba Early Learning and Child Care Commission put out a report recommending sweeping changes.

The commission, led by Kathleen Flanagan and Jane Beach proposed a “publicly managed, community-based” approach to early learning and childcare — the same phrase they used earlier to describe Prince Edward Island’s childcare model.

Flanagan and Beach said the province should establish five “Children’s Councils” (four regional, one francophone) to run and oversee early learning and childcare. These councils would assess the need for childcare spaces by location, age and hours of operation required. They’d then develop an annual plan for expansion, recruit organizations for new centres, support licensed childcare programs, and other tasks. It might also “incubate” a childcare program until it’s well established.

The report noted that the funding formula for childcare centres needed to be revamped to keep programs sustainable and to ensure staff were paid fairly. This included introducing a province-wide, regulated wage scale for childcare workers based on their qualifications. It also suggested taking into account that some childcare centres have much higher occupancy costs than others and adjusting funding accordingly. It suggested funding all eligible non-profit centres.

Months after the report came out, the NDP government lost the election to the Progressive Conservatives. While the Conservatives made some of their own improvements to child care, the commission’s plans were ultimately scrapped.

However, since the report’s recommendations draw heavily from a model that is alive and working in another part of the country, we can see how it may have played out in Manitoba.

Publicly managed, community based

In 2010, Prince Edward Island restructured its childcare model after assimilating kindergarten into the public school system. Flanagan, a P.E.I. resident, came in to examine the system and recommend how to sustain it.

Unlike Manitoba, P.E.I. actually had too many childcare spaces which were heavily concentrated in the Charlottetown area, Flanagan told the Co-operator. Many centres were very small or struggling to stay afloat with many empty spaces.

P.E.I.’s new plan saw the government do a thorough survey of the province’s preschool population and other metrics including commuting patterns, to determine where childcare spaces were needed. It then put out a call for proposals to start centres in areas where care was lacking.

The provincial government can also deny licences where it deems there is no need for new childcare centres, the Flanagan-Beach report says. It reasons too many childcare spaces dilutes the viability of existing centres.

The government gave existing centres the option to be provincially designated “Early Years Centres” (EYCs), which required more stringent criteria than normal licensing, but also came with “much more generous” funding, said Flanagan.

The government offered buyouts for struggling centre owners, and it offered free accounting and legal advice for centres looking to amalgamate.

Provincially EYCs are funded at 78 per cent of their operating cost which must cover staff wages (wages are also regulated by the province). The rest is covered by parents’ fees. This allows smaller or less-full centres to still stay afloat.

“There’s a big emphasis on the sustainability,” said Flanagan. “They didn’t want to invest in people getting set up and started and so on only to shut down one year, back up the next year.”

Eleven years in, the system is working said Flanagan — though not perfectly. In February 2020, the province’s early learning waiting list had between 500 and 600 infants, according to local news outlet the Journal Pioneer.

The report says most people were looking in Charlottetown, Stratford and Cornwall, all larger population centres in the province.

In rural areas, spaces are more likely to be available, Flanagan said.

The P.E.I. model isn’t a silver bullet. For one, rural P.E.I. isn’t rural Manitoba, said Flanagan. She recalled crisscrossing Manitoba during her study and worrying about running out of gas way out on the prairie. The scale is much smaller on the island.

She suggested it may not make sense for some rural communities to start daycare centres. Instead, they might consider family home options or using a room in an existing building (like a school).

When she and Beach wrote the 2016 report, Manitoba wasn’t looking to transplant P.E.I.’s system wholesale. The idea was to treat the child care as a system — to plan how to create and sustain it, she said. It may have encouraged more non-profits to come forward and start centres, she said. Today, groups probably look at the numbers and decide to do something else.

“Pretty much we just rest on communities to do it for themselves,” said Prentice — speaking about the funding and the paperwork around starting a centre. “I think it’s too hard and the results show it hasn’t been very equitable.”

Prentice advocated moving Manitoba child care to the public sector, like schools.

“You just can’t anymore think of childcare as a frill or a luxury that you can just leave to not-for-profits and the voluntary sector,” she said.

The post Rural childcare may need public management to succeed appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Abolishing school districts and boards will silence rural communities and may lead to the gutting of rural education, says Manitoba School Boards Association president Alan M. Campbell.

“Their voices will be gone,” Campbell told the Co-operator.

On March 15, the province released the text of Bill 64, the Education Modernization Act, one of several bills to pass the first reading in November without publicly releasing the text of the bill.

The bill follows a report from the 2019 Commission on Kindergarten to Grade 12 Education.

The province proposes sweeping changes to Manitoba’s education system. These include axing all English language school divisions and their boards of trustees, and then centralizing administration into a provincial education authority.

The education authority would oversee tasks like HR, IT, procurement, collective bargaining and remote learning, according to an explainer from the province.

Meanwhile, Manitoba would be divided into 15 education regions headed by directors of education who would “lead the delivery of K-12 education” and support “regional variation and local voice… in consultation with their local communities,” the explainer says.

The province says it will replace informal parent councils with school community council. Their role will be to advise the school principal. Parents will then elect an executive to work with the principal on “matters affecting the school community.”

One school council member from each region will be elected to a provincial advisory council for education.

The francophone school division will remain as structured, the province said, respecting its charter minority language rights.

The legislation is “designed to give parents more say,” Education Minister Cliff Cullen told media on March 15. It will formalize a structure for parents to interact with administration and education officials, he said.

Centralized decision-making will even out resource and funding disparities between divisions, he added.

While parents will have an advisory role, the province has little to say about what, if any, authority they will have, said Campbell.

“There’s not a lot of talk about what ‘the school community council will be responsible for,’” he said, adding there’s little about how the parents can hold the council accountable.

Campbell, a trustee in the Interlake School Division for over a decade, said as trustee he is directly responsible to parents, guardians and non-parent taxpayers for how school division money is spent. Until this year when the province froze educational taxes, trustees also were accountable for education tax rates.

This allowed community members to engage with the school board on issues that affected them.

The Co-operator asked the province what decision-making capacity the school community councils would have. In an emailed statement, Cullen said the councils will be the “local voice of schools and communities” and will have a budget to support parent engagement.

He said councils might be involved in assessing effectiveness of school programming, monitoring students’ learning outcomes, proposing capital construction projects at the school, deciding school policies, and overseeing student transportation.

However, it’s important that the new structure doesn’t become an unwieldy bureaucracy, said Eileen Sutherland, executive director of the Manitoba Rural Learning Consortium, a professional learning organization which supports Manitoba rural school divisions.

“It needs to be nimble the way rural school divisions have learned to operate,” wrote Sutherland in statements emailed to the Co-operator. “Research tells us that smaller organizations have the potential to be much more responsive.

“The strength of many rural communities is their keen interest in the education of children in their community. Having a voice is more than just simple rhetoric,” said Sutherland.

Campbell said he was concerned centralizing school administration will result in the gutting of rural schools which he likened to the gutting and closure of rural hospitals and clinics.

Many small communities in the Interlake are “just holding their own,” said Campbell. In some cases, tenacious school boards are what’s keeping schools open.

These schools often offer essential services people might otherwise have to travel to get, said Campbell. This might include social workers, addictions treatment, occupational therapy, speech language pathologists and access to other clinicians. If not for school board funding, these wouldn’t exist, he said.

The commission report took note of differences in resources between northern and rural schools and urban centres — praising the “resilience, creativity and inventiveness” of people in working around “scarce or non-existent” supports and services.

It said students in rural or remote areas should have the same high-quality programming and access as urban students and noted that upward of 20 per cent of immigrants in Manitoba settle in rural areas.

Cullen said the current funding model leads to huge inequities between communities.

Sutherland allowed centralization may offer some benefits for rural schools.

“Certainly some rural divisions are extremely small and so joining with others may expand programming and expand resources,” she said.

“Always optimistic,” she said. “Voice means more than hearing the words, the listener must also be prepared to take action in response to that voice. The government will need to demonstrate that through its actions.”

However, she cautioned that structural change would not automatically yield greater student achievement.

“If the changes stay focused on organizational and structural changes the impact on student achievement will NOT happen,” she wrote.

“Change occurs as teachers build their capacity, principals lead the work and curriculum reflects the needs of the learners as they operate in our society. Too often structural changes stay the main focus and the really important work falls off the radar as change fatigue sets in.”

Campbell called for people to engage with their MLAs as the bill moves to the committee phase or to register to speak during consultations on the bill.

The province said it hopes to implement the new governance model by July 2022.

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Some time after settling in Raditschev, in northern Russia in 1770, they were taught to farm by Johann Cornies – whose role was similar to that of agriculture minister – by placing Hutterite young people on Mennonite farms. The Mennonites had arrived in southern Russia decades earlier, and were successfully “dry farming” in the Chortitza area.

In 1874, the Hutterites immigrated to North America. “We are farmers,” they told President Grant and he invited them to settle in Dakota Territory. For the next 40 years, they engaged in agriculture, producing grain, sorghum, broomgrass and silage corn, as well as livestock, including milk and egg production.

Harassed during the First World War for refusing to participate in the military effort, the Hutterites immigrated to Canada, settling in the Prairie provinces, where they continued to farm and improve their agricultural expertise.

Because Hutterites are still involved in agriculture today, it is appropriate that even in the primary grades, Hutterite children are introduced to this aspect of their livelihood. Fortunately, there is a program available that has enabled us to do just that — Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC).

I teach at Brennan School, at Elm River Colony, and in the past I had seen AITC information, but always assumed the programming was geared to children in the city, rather than youth in a rural setting.

This year, however, my thinking changed, and I am glad it did.

Under the umbrella of AITC Manitoba, schools can enrol in various well-organized programs and utilize interesting classroom resources that provide hands-on learning opportunities for students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

Throughout this past school year, Brennan School students had the privilege of participating in several programs.

For example, last spring, we applied for and received a grant for our own “Little Green Thumbs” classroom garden. Then in fall, one of our teachers received training for two days and came home with all the equipment and materials necessary for this intensive indoor gardening program such as grow lights, potting soil and seeds. Several classes had the opportunity to grow vegetables and herbs in our school, providing a hands-on agricultural experience to strengthen that farm-to-food connection.

On a sunny fall morning, Brennan School hosted a first-ever breakfast at school. AITC Manitoba provided a “Made in Manitoba” breakfast, which our students, staff and many community members loved. Contrary to most of our meals – which are prepared in our community kitchen – this breakfast was cooked in our school, so several of our community ladies helped. An interesting interactive presentation was made before breakfast to give the students an opportunity to explore the agricultural industry and discover the origins of their breakfast. Although we are part of a farming community, this program gave students an opportunity to learn about agriculture beyond our immediate surroundings.

As well, every February, many schools across the province promote literacy during “I Love to Read” month. This year our promotion was extending into March to include agriculture-based literacy. Denise Payment, a retired teacher from Oakville with a farming background, came to celebrate not only literacy, but agriculture. She read books about farming, showed videos, and had our students participate in a hands-on agriculture activity: making butter. Our students eagerly shook their vials of cream, chanting the familiar rhyme:

“Come, butter come! Come, butter come!
Peter’s at the garden gate,
Waiting for a butter cake.
Come, butter come!”

By the time we chanted the rhyme for each primary class child, the butter was ready. We spread it onto soda crackers and the consensus was that they’d never tasted better butter.

Pizza Farm is an interactive learning experience for Grade 7 and 8 students. This program usually includes farm tours in the fall and spring, at farms that raise or grow pizza ingredients. Between the farm tours, each class engaged in curriculum-linked activities and grew their own pizza ingredients in an indoor school garden.

During the fall, our middle grades and high school agriculture students, along with several other classes in Portage la Prairie School Division, spent a morning touring several local dairy and vegetable farms.

At the dairy farm they saw a milking parlour and the huge tank where milk is stored until it is transported to the creamery. They also saw calves and were invited to pet them and let them suck on their fingers, a familiar experience for many farm children, that was enjoyed by the whole group. After the tour, students were treated to homemade cookies and a carton of chocolate milk.

At the vegetable farm they observed the process of market preparation: carrots arriving at the plant, being washed, packaged and boxed for shipment. They saw the storage facility and the machines in action.

Next, the students travelled to the community hall in Oakville for lunch, after which they visited various agricultural centres which included learning about erosion and pesticides – both chemical and organic – as well as the economic spinoffs and potential careers in agriculture.

The final phase of the program took place here at Brennan School in spring. Several stations were set up in our gym where students engaged in hands-on activities: learning about pulse crops, testing canola seeds for ripeness, crushing canola seeds to make oil and making salad dressing, which they tasted by dipping fresh vegetables provided by AITC Manitoba.

The grand finale to this program? Our Grades 3 to 8 students made their own pizza. Typical for all AITC programs, materials, cooking utensils and ingredients were sponsored by various agriculture commodity groups or companies.

After each of the programs, the presenters left us with fabulous resources to further our students’ agricultural learning.

There are a few things we plan to do differently this year, with the experience of hindsight, but we definitely plan to continue teaching our children about agriculture.

The post Not just for city kids appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“Everything we do here is to try and motivate the students to learn. We want to give them all different skills so that they have all of the competencies in place to be successful later in life, and that certainly includes education about the environment and sustainable living,” said Kyle McKinstry, the school’s principal.

The kindergarten to Grade 8 school has worked closely with the local Whitemud Watershed Conservation District (WWCD) on a number of sustainable development projects over the past five years.

“We have an amazing relationship with WWCD and have worked closely with it for the past few years. Essentially, any time we look to initiate a new project like these, we collaborate with it,” McKinstry said.

Last year, the WWCD recognized the conservation efforts and sustainable practice education that was being undertaken at the school, and named them the 2015 conservation district award recipient.

McKinstry says the school’s 122 students have always embraced these projects and often jump at the chance to get outside and get their hands dirty.

One of the main projects is the school garden, which is maintained by the students and harvested in the fall for a school feast.

“We have everything growing, potatoes, onions, and carrots. Our kids plant all of those items and tend to them throughout the school year,” McKinstry said.

A vermicomposting program was also established where students learn how to use earthworms to convert vegetable waste left over from their school lunches into natural plant fertilizer that is then used in the garden.

Most recently, the school planted a handful of fruit trees along its boundaries.

“We just planted 10 fruit trees out in our yard here, two weeks ago. We have cherry, apple, pear, plum and haskap berry.”

With help from the community, Austin Elementary has also put a focus on bringing biodiversity into the schoolyard and creating a number of natural play areas.

The school worked with the WWCD and community members to create a 0.77-km walking and cross-country ski trail on the school grounds.

Once the trail was established, students worked alongside the WWCD to plant 347 trees along its borderline.

“We did that all in one day. Got the kids out digging holes and planting trees. It was quite an event,” McKinstry said.

One of the school’s projects this year has been the creation of a drain system, which will incorporate a pump that students will be able to use to collect water for the school garden.

“We have water that comes off of our roof and it was just flooding an area out every year. So, we have changed it into a French drain with a little bit of a riverbed system.”

A number of the projects is carried out and maintained by the students themselves, something McKinstry says gives them an innate sense of pride and ownership.

“We believe that a school needs to be a place where kids want to come and if they have a part in building what that looks like they will be more likely to come and be successful.”

The school has also created an outdoor classroom that includes a number of sitting spaces, a chalkboard and a sunshade.

“The kids love getting outside. Most of these projects are about making the kids aware of what we should be doing, in terms of sustainable practices, and teaching them how to do it. The hope is that they will use these skills once they are out on their own and pass them on to their kids as well.”

WWCD manager Chris Reynolds said the relationship between the school and his group has spanned several projects including the large shelterbelt and most recently the outdoor classroom.

“Principal McKinstry and the teachers of AES are always looking for new ways to bring conservation and environmental education into the classroom, and the students are always eager to learn about the environment and conservation of water and other natural resources,” Reynolds said. “Their progressive attitude and leadership in environmental education made AES an ideal candidate for the 2015 CD award.”

The post Austin Elementary School earns conservation award appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“Knowing a colour’s character can provide more than just a beautiful space, it can help a child get better sleep, bring out their creative genius, and be more confident and calm,” says Bev Bell, creative director, Beauti-Tone Paint and Home Products Division, Home Hardware Stores Limited. When decorating a bedroom find the perfect colour inspiration for your child.

Colours and their influences

We tend to shy away from orange in a bedroom, however, it is the social colour that encourages confidence and independence. Orange is energizing and attention getting. This is a great colour for a playroom or play area of the bedroom. Use it on a focal wall so as not to overpower the room.

Yellow is as joyous as waking up to a beautiful sunny day, and it also helps with memory and concentration. That’s why the first post-it notes were yellow. Be cautious though, of large doses of bright or citrus yellow. In some people it creates a feeling of anxiety and anger.

Red is high energy and excites the mind. It is associated with love, comfort and warmth. In a bedroom it’s best left to smaller doses so as not to overpower the senses. For chic colour chemistry, combine red with a great grey or a warm taupe. A soft warm red plays well with all colours.

Pink helps calm anger and behavioural issues, and evokes feelings of compassion, caring and love.

Green is the shade that soothes the soul. It is a colour that brings on a sense of tranquility. Studies have shown it helps with reading and comprehension and it’s also great for sleep so it can work in a study area and a sleeping area of the bedroom.

Blue is the calmest colour of the spectrum and the most popular colour for bedrooms. It’s a well-balanced hue that is like music to your eyes.

Purple, the colour of royalty, is the perfect colour for your prince or princess. Because it is rarely found in nature, it is considered exotic and mysterious. This regal colour helps release a child’s artistic creativity.

When it comes to budding geniuses, there is nothing neutral about neutrals. Greys, taupe, and beige support intelligent thought and focused studying.

Older children should have some input into the colour of their bedroom. Include them in the process then make your final decision based on how the colour will affect your child. You can update their space while having some influence on the effectiveness of their surroundings.

A new school year brings excitement and anxiety. Help your child through the initial angst by starting them off in a new décor that will calm and inspire them throughout the year.

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