Principal’s Report

LIVING GARDEN

A big ‘thank you’ to the staff, students and parents who have helped to make Our Living Garden such a wonderful learning space for our students!

Our Living Garden is iconic of the practices we aspire to at Matthew Flinders - “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share” - and forms a core part of our curriculum. As students arrive in Year 7 they build a class plot on which to work and learn. In Years 9 and 10, our horticultural and environmental technology electives lead to VCE Environmental Studies.

But our Living Garden is not just for the girls at Matthew Flinders - it is shared with the wider community. DAL and Bay City Early Learning Centre use our garden as a learning space too.

As part of our “Fair Share” principle, produce from the garden grown by Matthew Flinders students will ultimately be shared with people in the City of Greater Geelong who would benefit from fresh organic produce. Our Living Garden will also be a place of sharing knowledge and skills within our local community.

What has the learning looked like so far?

Initially, girls in Year 7 and the Year 11 VCAL students made the garden beds out of recycled materials. This required hammering, sawing, measuring and nailing. The first few were a little crooked, which provided a wonderful Pythagoras lesson for the Year 9 Maths and Year 11 VCAL students and an angles lesson for the Year 7s! This building activity led to the creation of sheds, platforms, storage spaces and day beds.

Different classes from Years 8 - 9 were involved with decorating pots, sign making and generating art works within the garden. Food Technology classes have used the produce in their cooking. In Science, the Year 7 students have been able to investigate the white cabbage moths that consumed our broccoli.

In Year 9 and Year 10 Maths Extension classes the students were required to deconstruct, design and make seats and a solar water feature. This required skills such as measurement, angles, Pythagorean triangles, rates of flow, conversion and applied algebra.  Year 7s are currently completing a Maths problem solving activity where they have to investigate and design a ramp for a wheel chair so that someone can get onto the platform in the garden.

A key focus of learning in the garden is to foster problem solving, thinking and collaboration. Students are encouraged to explore possibilities, to test ideas, make adjustments, justify their decision-making and to learn from their mistakes. The constructions are not perfect and may not last for 10 years but this doesn’t matter, as we can make some more.  This type of learning is very different from showing the girls what to do and then having them reproduce it. 

Highlights

A few highlights of the garden have been:

• Watching girls happily and safely building things
• Parents, community members, students and staff working together to ‘pop up’ our garden in February
• Seeing the girls still sitting in a circle in the space but in a much nicer environment than they had previously
• Our girls helping the young people from Bay City and DAL to learn about the garden
• Going out to the garden hoping to get a few snow peas to eat and finding them already consumed by the students
• Students and staff wandering into the garden to supplement their lunches (if they’re lucky!)

The aims of our Living Garden are to:

• Provide opportunities for the school and local community to share an under-utilised area
• Establish a calm and beautiful space for people to enjoy, from both within and without
• Engage the school and the wider community in activities that increase their awareness of permaculture, sustainable living practices, caring for our environment , healthy eating and reusing/recycling practices
• Allow the students of Matthew Flinders Girls to give back to the community  the resources created within the garden, thus further enhancing the wellbeing of others

What next?

• We are currently working on creating a recycled timber and iron learning space .
• We will set up a tank to collect water from the school roof, so that we can water our garden.
• In February next year we will have an Art Day in the garden.

SCHOOL LOGO

At the last Council Meeting, after consultation with staff and students, School Council determined our new logo. I would like to thank School Council, staff and the Student Representative Council for their input into the development of the new design which represents the contemporary and academic direction of the school.

We will start to use the new logo this term and will provide the uniform company with a copy of the logo too. For a while the new uniforms may still have the old logo and that is perfectly fine. It will be possible, but not compulsory, to purchase blazer pockets with the new logo to sew onto the blazers if the girls would like to do this. Once we have more information about the specific details from the uniform company, we will inform you. 

STAFF UPDATE

• Ms Virginia Miller has returned from leave.
• Ms Kelly Campbell Stewart and Ms Margot Cameron have taken maternity leave and have been replaced by Mr Rob Dunne and Ms Tamaryn Stevens.
• Two staff, Ms Toone and Ms Gibson, have secured prestigious leadership scholarships to continue their leadership development journey.