The Best Kind of Award

A public school teacher friend of mine found out via Facebook that I had gone to Antarctica and asked if I would come in and speak to her school about it. So, on Wednesday, February 27th, I drove to the J.G. Workman Public school to give a series of presentations to their classes from Kindergarten to Grade 7.  This is an ECOschool so the kids are getting information on environmental issues and how people can impact the environment in positive and negative ways. You can find out more about this initiative in Ontario schools here.  One of the previous speakers helped start Toronto’s ban on Shark fins, so I had a tough act to follow.

My first presentation was to the Kindergarden class with grades 1 and 2 also in the room. I gave them a shorter version of the presentation, but they were great with excellent questions. Needless to say, the penguins were the most popular subject . I used a globe to explain to them where the Antarctica is, as I have found it  better than regular maps to show global distances.

This was great class with plenty of questions both in the presentation and afterwards. It was brutal on my knees, but easier to talk to them if I got down to their level.

We posed for a class picture afterwards and, as you can see, I accidentally blocked one of the kids in the photo.

(Note: Faces temporarily blurred pending parental permission)

Well, I turned around to see a look on this little girl’s face that most grown men would be reluctantly to give me. I’m talking the full squinty-eyed look that you usually see in westerns, just before a gunfight. She was NOT a happy camper. so we posed for another one.

(Note: Faces temporarily blurred pending parental permission)

As you can see, she was a little happier in this one. The other girl in this photo is the one who presented me with an award.

Much to my surprise, they presented me with an award that they had made themselves.

This picture doesn’t do it justice, as it has a tremendous amount of detail and the whole class spent a LOT of time making it for me.

Some of the other classes made a mural that was put up in the hallway by the time I was leaving for the day.

Here is me leaving with my award carefully rolled up for the trip home.

I love stuff like this, as I think an award that someone spends a lot of effort creating is much more important than something simply purchased without much thought. For me, the intent is everything. My nieces make me things all the time that I either have on my fridge or carefully stored in a drawer. It’s really creative stuff and means a lot to me.

I put this poster on the fridge for about a day, but decided that this really was an award and should go on my awards wall. I put the various awards on a wall in my office to remind me on difficult days that I might actually know what I’m doing, even if my current efforts are a bit of a disaster.

So, here my award from J.G Workman public school in a place of honour.

I had a great time and perhaps I’ll get the chance to speak to them again sometime in the future.