Students from Kelly Road Secondary scour the shoreline of the Salmon River for garbage on Friday

Prince George, BC – Students in a new program at Kelly Road Secondary School left the classroom on Friday to take up the challenge issued by the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup project…and actively help their community.

The grade eight and nine students are enrolled in the Northern Learning Centre at Kelly Road.  Instructor Steve Chase says it’s a different way of teaching, and learning.  "It’s all project-based, so all their coursework is integrated – their math, science, socials, and english is integrated."

Chase says the 40 students still cover the same curriculum as their peers in regular classrooms.  But he says, "They’re just doing it through bigger projects that they relate to personally, or just some ‘real’, relevant work that’s integrating all those subject areas."

Hence, the students’ idea to participate in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a joint venture between the BC Government and Vancouver Aquarium to improve the health of BC’s aquatic ecosystems.  The students were out at the Salmon River on Friday afternoon to pick up garbage at two locations along the river’s shoreline.  Their cleanup was one of 616 registered events taking place throughout the province between the middle of the month and today.(photo shows Jessica Floria (r), Kennedy Heitman (c), and teacher, Steve Chase)

Chase says the students worked from a Youth Leadership manual provided by the shoreline cleanup program to coordinate their efforts – everything from ensuring participants signed waiver forms, to ensuring garbage tallies were recorded properly, to contacting the City to make sure the waste collected was properly disposed. 14-year-old Kennedy Heitman was on the Directors Committee.  "It’s our first big project going outside of school and getting into the community," she says.  "And that’s what our group is about – getting out into the community and helping out.  It’s really good."

13-year-old Jessica Floria agrees.  She was one of the ‘editors’ responsible for ensuring everybody filled out their garbage tally cards correctly.  Jessica says she was drawn to the Northern Learning Centre for its project-based learning, is really enjoying it.  "It’s not your classic, ‘you have to do this subject at this time’, you get to pursue your interests more in the program."

While the group was moving on to their second cleanup spot and no garbage tally was yet available, with debris like a shopping cart being hauled, it’s fair to say the teens’ first community effort made an impact.  (l-r, Gabriel Callaghan, Tahno Eimer, and Jeremy Cuerrier Martin)

Tahno Eimer says he’s hopeful removing the debris will help ensure animal safety along the river.

In 2011, the cleanup removed 401,330 items from BC shores – the most common being cigarettes and food wrappers/containers. 

The province also had the highest participation rate in Canada last year, with 26,194 British Columbians removing more than 66-thousand kilograms of litter.