Imagine your child’s classroom in the open air!
The Langley Environmental Awareness Program (LEAP) brings kids outside to engage with their learning. Students from Kindergarten to Grade 5 spend two to three days a week learning outside, with the remaining time in a classroom. Using the great outdoors as a classroom, students learn the BC Curriculum through their interactions with nature.
Parents/guardians of the program must be prepared to pick-up and drop-off their child from various locations around Langley, and students must be dressed for the weather.
This high-demand learning opportunity will be transitioning to an academy beginning in September 2023. As an academy, the District is looking at expanding and offering placements for students in grade 5. Families interested in enrolling their child must attend a future information session. Parents/guardians interested in enrolling their child in available spaces in grade 2-5 must apply by contacting the program, which is based out of Fort Langley Elementary. If you have any questions about the program, please contact Fort Langley Elementary, Principal Logan Kitteringham: lkitteringham@sd35.bc.ca
If you want to learn more about this program, please complete this expression of interest form below.
Expression of Interest Form
To get a sense of the culture and staff in the program, you can watch this Meet the “Creature” video:
LEAP GUIDING VISION
The Langley Outdoor Education program seeks to nurture practices of learning and teaching to include a significant portion of the school year spent in meaningful, outdoor place-based settings throughout Langley. Learning will be cultivated in local places close to the program schools and in other parts of Langley. Experiences in natural settings will be made so that diversity, complexity, stewardship and sustainability become part of the students’ understanding of their place and world. Educators will use the current curriculum and the CARE document to organize and conceptualize environmental learning.
Use of the outdoors makes a major contribution to physical and environmental education and enhances many other curriculum areas. It contributes to personal growth and social awareness and develops skills for life and the world of work. Qualities such as a sense of responsibility and a purpose in life are nurtured.
CARE includes:
COMPLEXITY: considering the complexity and inter-relatedness of natural and human-created systems, and how humans interact with and affect those systems
AESTHETICS: developing an aesthetic appreciation for the natural world that encourages students to learn about and protect the environment
RESPONSIBILITY: providing opportunities for students to take responsible action and explore the environmental impact of their decisions and actions
ETHICS: providing opportunities to practice an environmental ethic based on an examination of values that can give rise to new visions, possibilities and actions
The Langley Environmental Awareness Program opened its doors at Fort Langley Elementary in September of 2017. Ms. Marlee St. Pierre (kindergarten) and Ms. Ashley Harder (grade 1 and 2) were hired as the teachers of the two classes, and their passion for outdoor learning is ensured a strong start for the program. They have engaged parents in the program and have ensured that students are working and learning outdoors as much as possible right from the beginning. The goal is to be learning outdoors 60 percent of the time. Mondays through Wednesdays are for learning outdoors. On Thursdays and Fridays, both classes are working and learning in classrooms at Fort Langley Elementary. A Special Education Assistant is dedicated to the program, providing extra support to students with diverse abilities and assisting in ensuring student safety in outdoor environments.
