Schools
Catholic Earthcare visits St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish Primary School, Bowral, NSW
The Year 4 classes at St Thomas Aquinas hosted Sister Mary-Ann Casanova, Project Officer with Catholic Earthcare, on her recent visit to their school.
A year 4 said, 'we had a visit from Sr Mary-Ann from Catholic Earthcare. She spoke to us about how we can care for God's earth. She explained this to us by telling us a story about a person called 'I Am' and how he makes us the Chief Gardeners to care for the land.'
The Year 4 class are the 'eco champions' of the school. As one of the students explained, 'we are caring for the earth by running a school garden. Year 4 are the caretakers. Everytime you're in year 4 you do the garden. Running a garden is fun because we get to get our hands dirty!'
The students gave Sr Mary-Ann a tour of their garden and introduced her to the scarecrow. A lots of herbs were sampled along the ways as the guides outlined the finer points of companion planting.
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'At our school we try to help by recycling, reusing and trying to use less paper. We recycle on Fridays. We go around and collect the recyling boxes [from the classrooms and offices]. We do this at St Thomas Aquinas because we want to protect God's Earth and not pollute it,' said another year 4.
Green Day Initiatives at St Michael's Catholic Primary School Mittagong, Good Samaritan College Hinchinbrook and Santa Sabina College Strathfield.
Catholic Earthcare Australia often refers to engaging the head, the heart and the hands when talking about ecological vocation. The Environmental Group at St Michael's, Susie Raso's Year 7.1 class at Good Samaritan College and the students from Santa Sabina College have put this into action. Students designed and ran fundraising events and kindly donated the proceeds to Catholic Earthcare Australia.
Thank you to the students and the teachers for their efforts and generousity.
St Michael's Catholic Primary School, Mittagong, NSW
The 'Green Day' initiative of the Environmental Group at Mittagong coincided with World Environment Day. Students were able to dress in green and participated in a big clean-up of the school and a presentation at school assembly reminded the students about the three different types of bins at the school [general rubbish, recycling and wormfarm]. The lunch time cake stall featured cakes with green icing and green frogs.
'I am very proud of the students proud of the students for their initiative and enthusiasm in organising the day... By donating to CAtholicEarthcare the students gain a greater appreciation that they are part of a much broader community that cares for the environment' said Paul Moroney, the school principal.
The Environment Group is a part of the school leadership program and the students are responsible for helpiing to maintain garderns, planting and caring for vegetables and monitoring the tidiness of the school.
Good Samaritan College, Hinchinbrook, NSW
Year 7.1 at Good Samaritan College planned a fundrasing day for August 26th. Tayla McPherson explained, 'we decided to sell colourful jelly cups because we wanted to stop saying that we were going to help the environment and actually get out into the open and action the things we were talking about doing. We were helping to save the environment one jelly cup at a time!'
Student Karl Ambosta said, 'we raised this money to help all of God's marine creation in the world which people don't normally support. The day was a success and all the jelly cups were sold in the first half of lunch.'
Ben Bailey pointed out, 'we started thinking about how all of the animals are getting a lot of attention and we found that the marine life get the least attention out of a lot of other animals. We also found that fish often get the least attention because of the way they look and people are known to favour animals such as tigers, lions, zebras and goats, for example'.
Green Fingers Save Water at St Jerome’s Primary School, WA
Recently, a 200-strong group of students, parents and teachers joined forces to plant 650 native seedlings in the grounds of St Jerome’s Primary School, Munster.
In Science lessons, the students have been learning that WA’s population is rapidly increasing while our water supply is seriously diminishing. This has prompted the school community to explore ways it can use less water.
“By planting native plants that can survive our harsh, dry summers without being watered, the school is doing its bit to help conserve our water supply for future generations”, said project coordinator and teacher, Kathleen McGinty.
“Our next project will have the students designing and making information plaques about how some of the plantswere used by Aboriginal people for foods or medicines and which birds or animals they provide homes for.”
The students’ had great fun planting as well as learning some of the finer arts of gardening! The project was made possible through the Cockburn City Council’s Sustainability Grants program.
Story and images courtesy of Kathleen McGinty
Nagle College, Bairnsdale, Vic
Hi there, I am a teacher at Nagle College in Bairnsdale and was interested in sharing with you a “Stewardship in action” project I have initiated at my school. We are situated along the Heritage Mitchell River, with a large riparian section adjoining our school. Pre white settlement, parts of this site were covered in Warm Temperate Rainforest. This vegetation class is now ‘nationally threatened’ vegetation,so it makes a wonderful stewardship project to re-instate the vegetation.
The project I have proposed is a cross-curricular one where any teacher of any subject works in or on the rainforest project site through their curriculum.We are installing an interpretive walk where signage will be installed to provide background of the cultural heritage and scientific interpretations. We are growing the species that form the rainforest vegetation class and work on this across a number of subject areas. Art, Music ,R.E , Building design, V.C.AL are all working on areas where students are producing work related to this project.
There is more information on our website which is www.nagle.vic.edu.au.
Kind regards Andrea Savage,Science Teacher,Nagle College.
Sacred Heart Primary School, Villawood
Sacred Heart Primary School, Villawood began a local garden some years ago. Planting a variety of vegetables and fruit is twinned with chooks so that the vast majority of their canteen production comes form this garden. The children are able to understand the food cycle by planting, looking after, harvesting and then using their produce. Students guide visitors through what they produce and where this goes. The reason the school began this approach is that the school is populated by 90% + Asian students, who live in local high-rise and didn't know where their food came from. Kindergarten children
show visitors on a smartboard where produce comes from. Many of the 
school families take advantage of the garden and pick the produce to use in their home. Principal, Philip Barrington, said that the garden had encouraged the students to understand the where and how food is produced and the importance of climate to food production and how climate change can disrupt this cycle.
