Students at Nottawasaga and Creemore Public School have received two grants from the Ministry of Education for student-led projects.
One project aims to build equity through activities associated with the International Day of Pink on April 13 and the other is about building bridges, both social and academic.
“The idea is that they are student-led projects and they are based on student voice, what the students want to do with the grant money, something to better their school community,” said NCPS principal Alison Golding.
The ministry hands out grants to students in Grade 7-12 for Speak Up projects as part of its Student Voice strategy, which aims to promote student engagement and success in Ontario’s schools by listening to and learning from students. Student Voice provides a variety of ways to share ideas with their school, the education community and the ministry about what would help them increase engagement in learning.
NCPS students Chancellor Stamp, Emma Woodhouse and Brady Wilson pitched the Amazing Race, rainbow edition, April 11-15.
It will be a week of equity-building activities around the Day of Pink, including a paint-the-town-pink campaign, during which students in Grade 4 and up will take part in a scavenger hunt event involving community partners. The activities will support the development of coping strategies and positive messaging around inclusiveness.
The organizers will be contacting businesses to ask if they would be interested in creating window displays and reaching out to local artists to see if they would be interested in helping with the activities.
The $1,000 grant will cover the cost of some of the activities, such as T-shirt decorating and making buttons with equity messages.
A second group of students – Grace Millsap, Quinn Boileau, Aiden Hepburn, Emily Burger, JD Lamondin and Travis Sacerty – worked with teacher librarian Carolyn Pike to develop science and technology activities that will build relationship between the grades.
Grade 7 and 8 student leaders will develop, plan, and implement equity related science and technology buddy projects for Grades K-3 students. They propose making lava lamps, fireworks in a bottle, birdfeeders, and creating and racing hovercrafts.
“Our goal is to build positive relationships between a variety of age groups in our school through our projects. In doing so, we hope that this will then continue a cycle of building bridges between the grades and make our school a safe and inviting learning environment,” said students in their proposal. “It is also our goal to promote science and technology to all students. We still hear comments in our school about the stereotypes of science, technology, and math being ‘boy’ subjects. We want to help change this way of thinking and have students recognize that school subjects, like future jobs, are gender-free.”