Lillian Forsythe
Lillian Forsythe has made a significant contribution to conservation of the environment through her work in education.
Raised on a farm near Wishart, Lillian taught as a primary grade classroom teacher for 31 years, mostly in Marion McVeety School in Regina. Among her numerous awards are the Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Science, Mathematics and Technology, 1995 and the McDowell Foundation Award for Educational Research, 1999 by the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation.
Lillian says, "I come from a farm background where you lived with nature. I tried to pass that on to my students, my love of nature, that we're a part of nature and we must take care of it, so respect for and caring for nature becomes second nature for them."
Some of the ways Lillian has made this approach part of her teaching include:
- As school coordinator of the SEEDS Foundation's Green School Program, she led her school to be the first in Regina to achieve Earth School status, with 1000 environmental projects completed, in 1997.
- As leader of the Environmental Club at her school, she led a three-year involvement in the Our Dreams project at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Participating students sculpted and painted wall bricks that became the Our Dreams wall and recorded their voices to "speak" when the bricks were touched. The 29 three-dimensional panels and a talking "Mother Earth" globe became the concluding exhibit in the Life Sciences Gallery at the museum.
- She was head of the Kleen Kat recycling program at her school.
- Through the school Environmental Club, she helped establish a wetland conservation project near Wolseley and took her grade 1 class to visit it.
- She took monthly environmental field trips with her students.
- She often led students in walks around the playground or the community, picking up garbage to care for the environment and make it more inviting.
- Students made snow studies in January; built bird houses and watched birds nesting every spring; planted seeds and cared for the school garden; hatched chicks in the spring; and twice found abandoned duck nests in the school yard, hatched the eggs, observed the behavioural differences between mallards and teals, and released them at a farm to fly south with other ducks in the fall.
- She engaged her class in letter-writing exchanges through the "Eco-Kids" project with classrooms in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa.
- She led her school regularly in spring walk-a-thons to raise money for the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and its work with animals and reforestation.
- She led in having the University of Regina Children's Garden moved from the campus location (then needed for new buildings) to her school; digging up, transporting, and replanting dozens of trees, shrubs, and flowers.
Submitted by Dan Beveridge