For everyone worried about the state of the youth nowadays, two Midhurst students are showing that the kids are alright.
The students and staff at Forest Hill Public School were a sea of white on Tuesday as they held a Polar Bear Awareness Day today. Everyone was encouraged to wear white and show their support for the dangerously ever-changing habitat of the polar bear.
This wasn’t some international hashtag or worldwide awareness day. This was the initiative of two kids in grade four who didn’t like seeing the images of polar bears in their current state and decided to make a video and speech about it.
Nine-year-old Regan Garner and his 10-year-old friend Grant Trumble are buddies at the Midhurst school and were asked to do a class assignment on something they cared about and that was important. Instead of doing a project on their favourite sport or video game, the two helped raise awareness of the plight of the polar bear.
“I had to do a project in school and I decided to do it on polar bears after I talked to my friend about how bad we both felt for them,” said Garner. “We wanted to make a day where we wear white and try not to use too much electricity. We ended up with all of our 27 classmates wearing white and helping us.”
Garner admits he has only seen polar bears at the zoo but through pictures and videos has seen the damage that has been caused by careless pollution. Trumble also feels like if we as a society don’t act soon, there may not be any of the northern giants left to admire.
“The electricity is creating greenhouse gases which is melting the ice that the polar bears need to survive,” said Trumble. “Cubs are drowning and they can’t find food anywhere and we’ve seen in pictures that they are really skinny. Me and Regan actually started really caring about it once we started studying.”
Next year, the boys say they are going to raise money for the bears and hope to keep everyone thinking about the animals year-round. The best friends got their whole class to wear white and even more students and staff followed suit to help spread the word. Regan and Grant’s teacher Michelle Cooper was very proud of her students and said it really does amaze her when kids are aware of a problem and they look for a way to help and see it through.
“The boys approached me a few weeks ago about how concerned they were about polar bears and their habitat being destroyed due to global warming,” said Cooper. “They asked me if they could make a day of awareness and of course I thought that was just so great. It’s amazing to see them take the initiative on something like that out of nowhere; it was so inspiring and I told them that whatever they needed me to do, we’d do it.”
Cooper helped the boys get their presentation together and film it before sending it to other classes in the school. The grade 4/5 French immersion teacher said that while she instructed the class to pick a topic they normally wouldn’t work on, doing it on an animal that is not in the region the boys live was impressive.
“It showed me the compassion they had as well as the fact that they chose something that wasn’t necessarily right in front of them,” said Cooper. “This would have been difficult to get some people involved because polar bears aren’t seen in our area, but they’ve done a wonderful job at getting people to care.”
