E School

Faris is one of our new Year 7 students and is completing his schooling at HCC as much as he possibly can, as he is currently stuck in China.  Last week he wanted to try joining in at E School. Thanks to technology, we were able to set up an MS Teams meeting and put him in a small group.  As you can see from the photograph, he was able to participate and engage with the group, and together they will work on developing a social impact project that will impact their community. At the end of the afternoon, it was a delight to read the following message:  “Dear Teachers, thank you for letting me into the E School class today.  I loved it! It was really fun.” 

The focus in E School this term is social impact and the Year 7-9 students have learned about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There was ‘hot desking’ and small group collaboration as students came up with different ideas using their God-given skills, and talents to make a difference in their community. 

To begin the session, we played a simulation game called Rickshaw which helped students understand the complexity of extreme poverty. In this game, students were assigned roles. Some were passengers, some were rickshaw drivers, and some were taxi drivers. The aim of the game was for the passengers (some were locals and some tourists – therefore with different levels of income) to travel around the destinations in the town and to choose transport accordingly. There was a lot of bartering and at times, some not-so ethical behaviour, but also some fun while at the same time learning about the difficulty that workers face in the transport industry in big cities like India and Bangladesh and also to help overcome any misunderstanding that ‘people are poor because they are lazy’.

There will be an ethical market and showcase to exhibit the students’ completed projects on the last Friday afternoon of this term (25 June) during Periods 5 and 6. More details will be available closer to the day.

Christina Douglas

E School Coordinator