Spring Training in HPEDSB

May 16, 2007

The Spring EarthCARE Training was held at the Board office this year, for two consecutive days. In each of the four training sessions, 52 of our 54 schools were represented. Teams ranged from single participants to full teams including students, teachers, building operators and Educational Assistants.

The agenda included a viewing of a video clip from An Inconvenient Truth; discussion and debate regarding Global Warming and Weather Changes; and much sharing of ideas and possibilities in each school community.

Follow-up comments ranged from "Thanks so much for the great workshop the other day. The kids really enjoyed themselves" from the team at Susanna Moodie and "Thank you for putting together such a great half day for the EarthCARE teams. The girls at my table indicated a few times that they were having a lot of fun and had thought it would be boring. I found that very refreshing. I also came away with quite a few ideas and I hope that we will implement them even in then next couple of weeks at Kente."

As we continue to work together and grow from our experiences, we also received some great suggestions for EarthCARE and for future trainings. Although we have been working toward 'cutting down' on the paper presented, a suggestion that we attempt to present information in a PowerPoint and a posting on the EarthCARE website for future individual downloading was made from the team at Trenton High. Another suggestion involved the use of the online forum provided by EarthCARE. Perhaps we could and should use that forum for better sharing in the future.

A special thank you goes out to those schools that followed up with comments re: "the good, the bad and the ugly." We are all about improving and making a difference!