Future Teachers Take Action with David Suzuki

The David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) has developed a partnership with the Schulich School of Education of Nipissing University. Various projects have been completed by the faculty and students of Nipissing University. This summer, a writing team composed of present and former students, Heather Gauthier, Brittany Burdett, Austin Van Lierop, Brittany Perry and Jordan Tamblyn, have been working to write a document called Connecting with Nature at the Brantford campus of Nipissing University. The team has been financially sponsored by the DSF with guidance from Jenny Guibert, instructor at Nipissing Brantford, as well as Leanne Claire from the David Suzuki Foundation. Together, they have worked to align a teacher resource to the Ontario curriculum, while adding additional components to create a valuable tool for educators. Nipissing education students had previously been involved in a similar course-embedded project with professors, Dr. John Vitale and Dr. Astrid Steele.The collection of activity-based lessons, Connecting with Nature, is designed for grades 4-6 and aims to build and foster a connection with nature by getting children outside and teaching them how to live within the limits of nature. The David Suzuki Foundation realizes the value in reaching out to younger generations to initiate environmental change. The writing team has worked also in partnership with Summer Fun 101, a camp run by the Department of Athletics and Recreation at Laurier Brantford to field test lessons from the document as a part of the camp's "Environmental Week." These lessons proved to be engaging, fun and informative as the students were introduced to topics such as harmful toxins in cosmetics, endangered species, water conservation, pollution and the Greenbelt.
The document will be published and available for teachers through the David Suzuki website in December 2011 for grades 4-6. The next phase of this project will expand the document into the primary and intermediate divisions. The David Suzuki Foundation and the summer writing team believe this resource will inspire students to value nature and provide students with the knowledge and capacity to live more sustainably.