Earth Day Festival at Sydenham HS

Jeff Green | Apr 15, 2010

Over the past few years, Sydenham High School has been bringing more and more of an environmental awareness to all of its activities, from the curriculum to how the school uses energy and how it handles waste.

This has led the school to receive recognition as a bronze level eco-school.

At the same time, Earth Day activities have been ramping up each year at SHS. All of this has culminated in 2010 being a special Earth Day at Sydenham.

Thanks in large part to the efforts of Eric Rutherford`s grade 12 Human Environmental Geography class, an Earth Day Festival is being planned for Thursday, April 22 at the school, and the general public is invited to participate in a number of events.

In the morning of the 22nd, an Earthworks Carousel will take place in the school gym. It will feature displays of any kind of project that relates to Earth Day from all of the grades at the school.

“The carousel will include photography projects, video projects, world issues projects, geography projects and others. The ministry is trying to incorporate as many environmental issues as possible into the curriculum and it has been a priority of the Sydenham High School community as well. The carrousel is quite a display of the kind of awareness, understanding and commitments that our students have developed. Things have really changed over the six years that I've been at the school,” said Eric Rutherford.

The public is invited to attend the carousel.

Later in the morning, the entire school community will be taking to the streets of Sydenham to do a spring clean up throughout the village. Over 1,000 people will be out on the streets cleaning up. Again, the public is invited to help out. Anyone wishing to do so is asked to contact the school at 613-376-3612.

After the cleanup, everyone will gather at the school football field at the Point for a BBQ, and during lunch there will be a series of games and other events, including a recycling relay and a hay bale throwing contest, as well as music from student bands.