Our Community

Taking Action - Daffodil Day at Morris

This term the Morris Council created posters and made announcements to support the annual Cancer Council’s Daffodil Day raising an impressive $690. Students across Morris wore a touch or a lot of yellow with some students using different mediums to draw or make a daffodil in their own time.  Archie, Izzy, Callum and Zoe (Year 6 Morris Council)  counted the hundreds of dollars ready for donating. 

Climate Impact Update

By Nicola Anderson, Environmental Science Teacher, Head of Science Faculty and Climate Impact Policy Working Group Convenor

Term 3 has seen the School engage the consultancy firm, Carbon Neutral, who are now working with us to audit the School’s greenhouse gas emissions. This process involves significant data collection in relation to our scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions (see Figure 1 below) for the previous year. In particular, we are providing details on our energy, water and waste usage with specific details provided on: 

+ Fuel use (e.g. generators)

+ Flights

+ Private vehicle use (business and commuting)

+ Taxi use

+ Travel & accommodation

+ Office paper & stationery

+ Catering & food

+ Couriers & freight (incoming and outgoing)

+ Refrigerant use

+ Waste disposal (solid and liquid)

+ Scheme water use

Figure 1: The three GHG emission scopes and how they relate to different organisational operations (Source: Carbon Neutral, 2022, Carbon Footprint Data Collection Toolkit)

In addition, we are going to be distributing a survey to staff and students to determine the emissions associated with their commute to and from School. This survey will be distributed in early Term 4.

The full article here also provides some tips on what can we do now. Read on.

We are never too small to make a difference

By Emily Keeling (Year 4 Teacher)

Pictured above: Benji Lai and his peers working on a group revegetation experience to stabilise an embankment.

This year, Morris Primary Years has established the Morris Environment Council. This representative body provides students with an avenue for taking a leading role as stewards within our school. Each term, passionate student representatives from Years 2 to 6 have met with me weekly to discuss their interests and ideas for sustaining and improving our environment in the primary school. 

Pictured above: a poster that Benji Lai designed and created to promote one of the Morris Clean Up events.

At the start of each term, a new student group shares their values and interests with each other, while building on the work of the previous groups. Our actions this year have seen students: organising several Clean Up Morris events; communicating key initiatives with their class; landscaping the gardens; as well as working on a number of other ideas for future implementation. Through action and discussions our students have developed a shared appreciation for maintaining a calm, safe and peaceful environment here at Morris.

Read the full article here

Cooking for Service

Joni Chuter and Jane Smith had the Year 9/10 Food Enterprise classes (4 of them, so some 95 students across Years 9 and 10) involved in cooking for service in the last week of Term 3. 

The Year 9/10’s learned how to make a bechamel sauce and made fresh individual dinner-sized lasagne portions and we were able to deliver 98 lasagnes and 65 freshly baked fruit muffins to Anglicare. Of which, 40 lasagnes went to the Anglicare young men's shelter in Moonah which provides crisis short term accommodation for 13 to 20 year olds and another 58 lasagnes and 65 fruit muffins were delivered to Anglicare’s Trinity Hill Youth accommodation service for 18 to 24 year olds in North Hobart. We are also very grateful to Vermey's Quality Meat Butcher in Sandy Bay for heavily discounting the beef mince to the School to help support this service venture.

Another 50 freshly baked raspberry and white chocolate muffins were delivered to Bethlehem House Men's Accommodation Service in North Hobart, run by St Vincent De Paul.

One Planet, One Chance

By Sahansa Udawatta (Year 10)

The Friends’ School Climate Action Group is the ideal opportunity for students with an interest in the consequences of climate change to gather, discuss their ideas and compose letters to politicians advocating for action. Each week students are empowered to have a voice in environmental policies by Kate Sinclair who fosters their understanding of topical issues and assists them in articulating their thoughts and solutions to the problem. On the 12th of August students were fortunate enough to attend a workshop by the Australian Youth Climate Council.

Read Sahansa's article here.