Seniors’ Future Makers Day

Tomorrow (Tuesday October 24), the Seniors will be engaging with a whole day of special activities learning skills to cultivate sustainable futures.

We have a special guest, volunteering her time to teach the students about Bushfire risk reduction and resilience —

 Dr Briony Towers is a researcher and practitioner specialising in education for bushfire risk reduction and resilience. For over 15 years, she has been collaborating with students, teachers, parents, fire agencies and emergency managers to develop education programs and community-based initiatives that involve children and young people as genuine participants in bushfire preparedness, response and recovery. Briony is the co-director of Leader and leads the child-centred disaster risk reduction project at Natural Hazards Research Australia. 

 Activities for the day:

Bushfire prevention and preparation education: This is a workshop run by a leading researcher in education for bushfire risk reduction and resilience Dr. Briony Towers. Students will learn how fire spreads, how to identify fuel for fire, and how to reduce the impact of bushfires, hunting for a range of fuel in Yakai Barring and the woodlands, and adding it to the fire pit in Yakai Barring for our burn off in the last session. 

Shelter building: with a range of materials, including tarps, ropes, pegs, and found objects, students will build the best shelter they can in 30 minutes. The whole group will tour the shelters and conduct wind and rain tests to judge who made the sturdiest shelter.

Weed foraging and feasting: students will follow a guidebook to forage weeds from the school yard, safely identify, cook up the weeds and bake according to a recipe in the Enviro classroom. 

Upcycled fashions: students will turn a range of materials into an uncycled outfit, or mend, repair, patch old clothes they have brought to school, showing their outfit in an upcycled fashion show at the end of the day. 

Fire burn off: we will end the day altogether in Yakai Barring, with Dr. Briony demonstrating a burn off of the ‘fuel’ students have gathered, teaching fire safety and celebrating the role of fire in the Indigenous practices of Cultural Burning to carefully manage Country for millennia.