You only know what you know when you know it.
This basic truism guides the teaching profession, and it was the impetus behind the district’s recent week-long collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Health called Wildlife Learning: Take It Outside Week. Students took part in activities during the week of Feb. 19-26 designed to both introduce them to outdoor careers they may not have considered before and increase their environmental awareness.
“The premise behind the initiative is to look at what their passions are and take them outside” to explore them, said Daneen Dymond, lead for the Centre of Excellence for Health. “So maybe it’s parks, maybe it’s forestry, maybe it’s hunting and fishing and all of those beautiful things. There are a lot of job opportunities that students are not aware of.”
Another of the week’s goals was to encourage students to remain in the province while pursue those outdoor jobs.
As a combination of two initiatives—the national, art-based Take Me Outside Day and Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD)’s provincial Wildlife Learning Week—the week’s outdoor activities were wide-ranging. Many high school students were able to see curriculum applied in real life through visits to Mactaquac Provincial Park, Mount Carleton, Crabbe Mountain, and similar locations.
District elementary and middle schools also participated, with mostly in-school activities.
Green jobs in action
As guest service educator at Mactaquac Provincial Park, Rae Sharp’s role is the perfect example of a green career. On Feb 20, she took several groups of ASD-W students into the forest to teach them the tell-tale signs of nearby—though well concealed—animals. “I talk about tree identification, animal tracks, scat that we find, what’s happening with buds in trees, mosses and lichens and mushrooms that we find as well,” said Sharp. “It’s a full science day.”
“It’s really important to me that the kids are able to make more connections of what’s happening here, kind of create a story and learn to be nature detectives in their own way,” she said. “It’s a time for them to explore and use their brains to learn new things that are happening in the environment when they’re not here.”
Mactaquac Provincial Park Guest Service Educator Rae Sharp
“Some students don’t get the opportunity to be outside. They don’t have the green spaces at their home because they live in apartments,” said Ross Campbell, ASD-W subject coordinator for Physical Education, Personal Wellness, Outdoor Education. “They may not understand that there are jobs within city recreation, Agriculture Canada, or Forest New Brunswick, so this could lead them down a career path they might have never known.”
When he was in school, said ASD-W Subject Coordinator for Science and Experiential Learning Peter Trusiak, “I didn’t know a lot about careers that happened outdoors, careers that related to environmental science and forestry that could actually help solve problems.”
“It was just, ‘now you’re doing calculus, now you’re doing chemistry, now you’re doing physics’. I’m saying what am I going to do with this and the response was ‘oh, that’s for you to figure out’.”
So Trusiak teamed up with Dymond and Campbell to plan the EECD-backed initiative for district students to figure out what their outdoor career options might be.
“I think the biggest challenge of our time is probably climate change and I think a foundation to understanding that is getting outside and observing your environment, paying attention to the natural world, which we often neglect,” he said.
A team from New Brunswick-based environmental education organization The Gaia Project visited Grade 9 students at both Woodstock High School and Fredericton High School on Feb. 25 to discuss so-called “green” jobs and the phenomena of eco-anxiety.
Students learned how jobs they’re familiar with can become green jobs. For example, Project Manager Ainslee MacMillan of the Gaia Project said, in reference to renewable energy careers, “there are lots of jobs out there like solar installer or wind technician that would also have electricians on the team.”
Gaia Project educators also gave tips to students on making their environmental practices more sustainable.
“Reduce single-use plastics, start recycling, and have a carpool system. Different things like that just lessen your personal impact” [on the environment], MacMillan said.
She also addressed eco-anxiety, which is a feeling of being overwhelmed thinking about climate and environmental issues.
“We talked about how so many youths around the world are starting to feel this,” said MacMillan. “You see the impacts of climate change so much more locally than you ever did before.”
These local changes include ice storms, big windstorms, and shifting seasons.
“We talked a bit about how students were noticing and experiencing these things,” she said. But “we tied that back into the green careers conversation and how some industries were busier than ever: power line technicians, people working for emergency measures organizations, etc.”
Students from Southern Victoria High School had a chance to explore green-related careers during tours of the Plaster Rock Lumber plant on Feb. 21 and 27. Of course the tours, led by representatives from Forest NB, the non-profit industry association representing the province’s forest industry, featured information on lumber production. But in keeping with the green careers angle of the week, students also learned that “forestry isn’t all foresters,” said Forest NB Communications and Marketing Manager Andy Tree.
“Roughly 24,000 people work in forestry in the province,” said Tree. “10,000 of those are directly in the forest and then the rest are a wide variety: biologists, millwrights, shipping, HR and admin. There’s a huge variety of jobs.”
“We’re making a lot of efforts to shine a light on what forestry is, dispel a few myths, and really empower teachers as well,” he said. “We’re really excited to be doing more with the education sector and really enjoying been invited to a lot of different events with ASD-W West.”