Churchill Community High School

Overview

Churchill Community High School is a grade 7 - 12 school in treaty 6 territory. As a school in Northern Saskatchewan, Churchill Community High School is keenly aware of the importance of sustaining our natural environment for future generations as our community is deeply rooted to the land. For northerners the land is our home, our food, our culture, and our survival. At CCHS we have three tiers of environmental awareness; school wide programming, building initiatives and community outreach.

School wide programming includes extensive recycling (paper, plastics, cans, bottles, batteries, cardboard, writing instruments, household tin, and toner/ink cartridges). Churchill Community High School has year-round composting. The finished compost we create is used in raised beds where the gardening club grows food for the school servery's lunch program. We work on highlighting various environmental issues and building awareness of small actions we can all take. We have outdoor, culture- and land-based activities (Woodland Cree). Our students are engaged in ecological partnerships such as the Boreal Watershed Monitoring Program (SK Research Council) where they collect local water samples and learn to monitor the health of our watershed, and wildlife tracking; all of which are complimented by engagement with our elders for holistic learning experiences. We also teach Environmental Science.

Our building initiatives include solar panels to heat water, motion sensitive classroom lights, dual-flush and low-flush toilets, and automatic taps in the bathrooms, and a filtered water bottle filling station.

Community outreach focuses on collecting donations of clothing which are converted to rags to be sold as a fundraiser for Special Olympics and a curbside recycling pickup program for homes in our area (there is no such municipal service in our area).

Last year we hosted the first ever Northern Saskatchewan Student Eco-Conference for schools in the north. This was an intensive two-day conference featuring workshops on environmental conservation and sustainability. After participating in a series of workshops on water conservation, solar cooperatives, recycling, composting, indoor and outdoor gardening, and the impact of invasive species on the environment, student teams of 4-6 from across the division applied their knowledge to real-world, community based environmental issues. They developed an Environmental Action Plan to bring back to their home communities in hopes of fostering environmental responsibility and stewardship through Northern Saskatchewan.

This year we did a local middle years eco-conference with workshops on gardening, composting, garbage audits, wildfire management, forestry management, recycling, water sampling, and wild rice production. The middle years science club is continuing to do recycling projects to raise awareness.

Saskatchewan Sustainable Schools
updated 12/2017 by mcroma