Central Okanagan students are helping bring life back to the wildfire-torn Bear Creek area.
Erika VanOyen and her Grade 3 students from Glenmore Elementary were invited to plant some trees with the Rutland Senior Secondary Forestry Program on April 11.
“You can’t get kids involved and worried about things happening globally if they’re not already learning about things locally,” VanOyen said. “Once they care about their local land, their local environment then they can start to see bigger.”
The elementary teacher said she’s tried to work the outdoors into all of the curriculum, including tree measurements for math, books on trees for literacy, and looking at controlled burns and the importance of land in Indigenous studies.
The R.S.S. Forestry Program has been around for over three decades, every year taking the time to plant trees in the Central Okanagan.
Teacher Marshall Corbett said students in the program learn various aspects of the trade from fire ecology and firefighter training to arborist work and conservation work.
Corbett said the program’s goal is to plant 8,400 trees this year.
Grade 3 students Caleb and Beckett said they helped plant about 30 trees each.
“It was a fun experience,” Caleb said.
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