Pense Elementary became the 14th school in Canada to earn the coveted Earth School Level 2 designation. Debbie Quinlan explains how and why this has been possible:

"We joined the program 16 years ago in 1992. The students and staff completed 1,000 projects to become an Earth School and we achieved that in the year 2000,'' said Quinlan, who teaches at the Pense school and acted as the program co-ordinator.

"Once we achieved Earth School designation we kind of thought, 'Now what?' We were kind of in a groove and wanted to keep making environmental awareness a priority.''

"That is what we have done. It has taken us another eight years to reach that goal, but today we are officially completing our 2,000th project so we are having a big celebration of that along with Earth Day,'' Quinlan said.

"We also have a prairie restorative garden at the side of our school where we have planted native plants of Saskatchewan that might otherwise have disappeared from our landscape,'' said Quinlan, whose students also participate in an annual town and playground clean-up.

"I am particularly impressed with the way that the students throughout that period of time have embraced and carried on with those initiatives that way back when being 'green' wasn't as popular or seen as a politically correct thing to be doing,'' said Rod Luhning, chairman of the Prairie Valley School Division.

"I really do have to compliment them on the fact that they not only took positions as good citizens of their community but really stepped forward and I think have been examples of what good global citizens look like.''

(from Leader Post APRIL 24, 2008)