Environmental Leadership

CERES Student  Environmental Leadership Program

Angela Olah

Teacher - Science

This term, Year 9S and 10S students joined forces to level-up their environmental leadership skills by investigating the importance of preserving Biodiversity on different scales. 

To help use with our goal, an expert facilitator from CERES visited BSC to run the Student Environmental Leadership Program. This program allowed students to participate in 4 unique workshops in which they collaborated across year level groups to: deepen their understanding of biodiversity by learning about native species and proposed initiatives which were important in the Victorian context, completing a biodiversity audit of the school and developing proposed action plans for how biodiversity could be improved on campus. It was fantastic to see the students sharing knowledge and ideas across year levels, with lots of strong teamwork and peer teaching occurring throughout the day. The workshops involved the students employing cross-curricular skills, harnessing scientific understanding to explain issues around biodiversity, whilst utilising data collection, analysis and mapping skills from their humanities training. The group successfully collated all collected data to create BSC’s current biodiversity map (as seen in the images below) and develop a subsequent rating of our current measures of biodiversity. They also proposed highly creative and viable initiatives for improvement, ranging from growing vines on the cyclone fences to frog ponds and more!

Now We Have Worms!

The day did not stop there.  

To have an immediate, positive impact on the school’s environmental footprint, the final session of the day involved setting up 2 worm farms  which will be used to improve the management of organic waste at the school. Students not only facilitated the set-up of the farms, but thoroughly documented the process (taking the photos above) and using their understanding to create a care-guide.

These worm farms are currently being fed food scraps from the school’s kitchen classroom and are under the diligent care of the BSC Sustainability Club. Each worm farm can process 3-4kgs of organic waste per week, creating highly nutritious soil in the process. The Sustainability Club students plan on expanding the collection of organic scraps, as well as using the soil to enrich the existing garden beds to create healthy homes for their seedlings from the bottle garden.

All students are congratulated for their efforts on the day - not only did they make an immediate improvement to the environmental footprint of the school, but also made significant contributions to Brunswick’s Sustainability rating through the Resource Smart Schools program. Well done!