Teachers Learning New Lessons on the Environment

ENVIRONMENT/LABOUR--Teachers Learning New Lessons on the Environment

Teachers from across the country are in Nova Scotia today, July 3, to learn new ideas and techniques for educating their students about the environment.

The Department of Environment and Labour has worked with the KEY Foundation, a non-profit organization, to bring this year's "Resourceful Thinking" teachers' conference to Nova Scotia for the first time.

The goal of the conference, which runs from July 3 to 7, is to develop teacher training and classroom materials focusing on current topics relating to science, environmental science and social studies. Thirty teachers will learn from academic, industrial and government experts who are often not available to the teachers throughout the year.

"Nova Scotia has environmental success that has been emulated around the world," said Barry Friesen, solid waste resource manager for the Department of Environment and Labour. "We are pleased to help the KEY Foundation deliver such a conference. It's important to continually educate people about the latest issues and developments in the environment."

Mr. Friesen said this conference is significant because it targets educators who are keen to continuously seek out new ideas and materials for their teaching.

The topics at this year's conference include: composting, a tour of the Halifax Recycling Facility, product stewardship, and sustainability issues.

The conference attracts a variety of participants including teachers who spend their days with students in a classroom and those with jobs in outdoor education facilities, teachers from elementary, high schools, colleges and universities, directors of education, teacher/social workers from the north and educational specialists with provincial and municipal environmental programs. It is one of several conferences hosted throughout the year by the KEY Foundation.

"Teachers from Nova Scotia are customarily well-represented at the KEY Foundation and the environment summer programs," said Bob Killam, executive director of the foundation. "This is a compliment to the professionalism of these teachers, who are keen to spend their personal time to gain the new ABCs of information (accurate, balanced and current) for their classrooms. The programs draw teachers from coast to coast and sharing ideas from very different locations becomes a great part of the professional growth. It's great to host this conference in Nova Scotia for the first time."

Mr. Killam said the conference is just a starting point for the teachers' professional development. Each participant will develop lesson plans on the program themes and then share them through the KEY Foundation Web site with their colleagues.

The KEY Foundation promotes and encourages better understanding of often complex relationships between society, technology and the environment. The foundation believes that providing access in schools to balanced information from experts in all three areas, will better enable Canadian students to make more rational and responsible judgements on key environmental and health issues.

More than 1,500 Canadian teachers have attended KEY Foundation summer programs since 1987.

For more information on the conference, see the KEY Foundation Web site at www.key.ca .