The Regional Engagement Enterprise
TREE – ‘Rethinking Learning’
A key goal for The Regional Engagement Enterprise in 2018 is to establish a contextual project in every year of the prep school and every faculty of the senior school. Significant progress has been made to date and the below is a snapshot of some of the activities and projects undertaken. To hear more, become a follower of our blog theregionalengagemententerprise.com or follow us on Instagram (tree_kws).
Y8 Geography (08GEOS) at Windermere
As part of their Year 8 Geography course, 08GEOS mapped our new school farm (Windermere) with Mr Ronald (their teacher) and Mr Peter Worsley from the NSW Department of Primary Industries.
Working with avenza maps on their iPads, the students began by first mapping the school to learn how to plot distances, calculate areas and draw boundary margins. Once competent the students headed out the the farm and mapped 4 different quadrants in small groups. They mapped fence lines, areas of erosion, waterways, gates, heavily vegetated areas and areas of infrastructure.
These maps and key point locations were then downloaded and sent to Mr Worsley in an excel spreadsheet for him to overlay them in one large map. This map was requested by the school’s Farm Steering Committee who will use it to help inform their understanding of the property and their decisions on how to stock it.
Y10 Drama
As part of their Year 10 course, our drama students explored the issue of regional and rural mental health in Term 1 with their teacher Ms Dunkley. This is a very topical subject, particularly for our boarding community of whom many have been sadly touched by farmer suicide.
During the project the students had a tutorial from local filmmaker Jim Gowing of Awe vision (http://awevision.com.au)on how to imagine, film and edit the necessary material for a short feature film. They also had a brilliant talk from and discussion with RAMPH (Rural Adversity Mental Health Program – http://www.ramhp.com.au) consultant Di Gill from Canowindra. Di explained the warning signs, triggers, programs available to help and actions people living in a regional area can take to ensure improved wellbeing.
The students produced some brilliant, albeit confronting, short documentaries; often using images and stories of home. Here is a link to Henry Williams’ video https://vimeo.com/268756602.
The TREE Team at the Farmers Markets
During Term 4 2017 and Term 1 2018, 16 students from Years 8-11 participated in ‘The TREE Team’ as an alternative to their co-curricular commitment. These students had to design, develop and pilot a business that sold home-grown and value-added produce at the Orange Farmers markets. They began with a butchery course on making sausages, smoked bacon and Christmas ham from local smallgoods maker Stefan Birmili of Cured Orange. Following sales in excess of $2000, the students reinvested these funds into their ‘Dinner in A Bag’ concept. With the help of local horticulturalist Greg Kocanda, the students planted up the market gardens at the Wolaroi and PLC site before harvesting their bounty. These used the fresh produce to make fresh pasta (using the eggs from the chickens) and sauces (tomato, herb butter and pesto) which combined with some of the produce was sold as a ready-made dinner for $20 to market goers. The students did fantastically well in raising over $1000, part of which went to Foodcare in Glenroi as ‘Dinner in a Bag’ donations (recipe cards included) and in hosting Christmas morning tea.
Tom Riley
Director of The Regional Engagement Enterprise