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Tatla Lake school earns $2,500 for recycling story

Tatla places second in Encorp Return-It School Contest
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Tatla Lake Elementary Junior Secondary school won $2,500 to fund extra school programs, thanks to the Encorp Return-It.

The school recently placed second in the Encorp Return-It School contest, where they were asked to tell the story behind the school’s recycling collection program.

The story was judged on its creativity, interest and impact.

Here’s Tatla Lake’s story:

The Tatla Lake Return-It Story

Tatla Lake Elementary Junior Secondary School is a tiny remote Kindergarten to Grade 10 school in the West Chilcotin.

The 26 students in this school come from diverse backgrounds – we have a few First Nations students, students whose parents immigrated from Germany and Switzerland, students whose parents went to Tatla Lake School, parents who are ranchers, physiotherapists, estheticians, counsellors, bus drivers, cooks, postal clerks, store clerks, medical clinic workers, cowboys, electricians, motor cycle technicians, logging truck drivers, we even have a refugee family who recently arrived from Sudan.

Our main goal of our recycling programme is to raise money to support field trips. We have a nature education focus at our school and we try to get “bums out of seats” as much as possible so that students can experience hands-on and place-based learning.

In the past, through money we have raised, we have been able to go skiing and snowboarding at Mt. Timothy.

We took the whole school (and most of the parents) on a camping trip to Barkerville last year, just before the devastating forest fires. We had to take a long detour because a mud slide closed our local highway.

In order to help develop a sense of belonging at our school, the four members of our student council went to the BC Student Leadership Conference in Surrey this past October. At this conference our students participated in a community service project. They helped to clean up Crescent Beach in Whiterock. Again, money raised through the Return-It programme helped to fund this trip.

Our whole community works together to help us in our fundraising efforts.

Instead of travelling two or three hours to get to the nearest Return It Depot, members of our community donate their bottles and cans to our school. The students then sort, bag, and box all of the bottles, cans, and containers. Once a month, when school district mail gets delivered to our school in a big cube van, we send our recyclables to the Williams Lake Return It Depot with Stuart, our kind-hearted delivery man, in his empty van. This year we have managed to collect a whopping 16,711 containers and save $1,067.76!

We have a final field trip booked for the very last week of school. We have been invited to visit the Hakai Institute on Calvert Island, west of Bella Bella. This unique research institute conducts long term research on the interaction between coastal and terrestrial ecosystems of British Columbia.

Scientists from around the world, with institutes like the Smithsonian, come to Calvert Island and the Hakai Institute to participate in the great research they do there. The learning opportunities for students at this site are incredible, both from an academic and social perspective. Our budget for this field trip is significant as we need to take a water taxi to the island (at a cost of $6,000) as well as pay for the bus to Bella Coola and food along the way. In addition to visiting the Hakai Institute, we will be exploring the coastal rainforest and Nuxalk Territory around Bella Coola. This field trip will combine Social Studies, Science, PE, Math and Visual Arts.

Our success in fundraising has allowed us the opportunity to take our students on some pretty incredible experiences!

The day to day school work, learning to read, write, and develop numeracy skills are important; but the field trips the students go on, the excitement for learning, and the memories created are what turn our kids on to lifelong learning. Thanks for supporting our kids.

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