Green roof planting: the happiest thing for Nan'ai schoolchildren

(Taiwan Business News) At the municipal Nan'ai Elementary School, a small school on the outskirts of Hsinchu City near Miaoli County, Principal Lin Qicheng has excelled in promoting a sustainable campus policy. The "Building Dreams in the Sky" green roof has passed the first-stage review by the Ministry of Education. After securing second-stage approval, the current experimental area on the roof of Zhong'ai Building will be doubled in size. Mayor Xu Mingcai yesterday (the 15th) led Education Department Director Jiang Weimin on an inspection visit, affirming the school's multifaceted achievements in combining roof waterproofing, green energy resource recycling, grassroots ecological conservation, and the discovery and inspiration of physical phenomena. Seeing schoolchildren come every day to care for the plants they had planted themselves, he praised this as the best educational outcome and instructed the Education Department to coordinate with the classroom environment improvement project for Zhong'ai Building, so that both indoors and outdoors become a place of building dreams in the sky.

Principal Lin explained that the school's "Building Dreams in the Sky" green roof is carried out by the Institute of Environmental Engineering of National Chiao Tung University under a National Science Council project, with results scheduled to be published next (May). At the same time, in its application under the Ministry of Education's sustainable campus program, it has also passed the first-stage review and is moving toward the second-stage approval result. Since its launch in December last year, after more than four months of hands-on experience, the schoolchildren have cared deeply for the plants they planted with their own hands, coming every day to observe their growth, joyfully watching the flowers of life nurture and thrive, and experiencing the diligence and dedication of caring for growth.

Mayor Xu affirmed Principal Lin's school development policy of combining low-carbon green energy with a sustainable campus, noting that the green roof of Zhong'ai Building achieves multiple functional goals at once, with the effectiveness of implementation verified by the smiles of the schoolchildren.

Fifth-grader Xie Jiaheng came to "Building Dreams in the Sky" during break time, picked up the plant he had grown and examined it for a long while, and contentedly described how he first put soil into a PET bottle and planted his beloved plant. From the tiny appearance when it was first planted, the stems and leaves had now grown much larger and more luxuriant. He said excitedly that being able to see it every day at school is the thing he looks forward to most and the happiest thing of all.