Year 7s Taking Responsibility for a Clean Campbell and a Clean Capital
Campbell High School
By Matthew Noonan, Teacher
Main Objective
Empowering Year 7s so they can teach the other year levels about national image and identity by taking responsibility for creating a cleaner Campbell, and a cleaner Parliamentary Triangle in their Capital.
Aims of the event
Campbell High, like most high schools, is constantly pushing our students to embrace teh role they can play, both individually and as a school community, in making Australia the greatest nation it can be. Like most high schools, we are constantly investing energy, resources and time into getting students to take pride in their local community by keeping the school environment as clean and tidy as possible. Over the last eightenn months, however, we have been struggling to get the 'message' through to all student groups as effectively as we would like.
Event preparation
Campbell High is part of the ACT Parliamentary Triangle (surrounded by icons such as the Australian War Memorial, ANZAC Parade, Mount Ainslie and CSIRO) and bordered by native bushland at the base of the mountain. Keeping our school and local community areas tidy and clean is important not only for our own self-respect and pride, but also for domestic and international tourism.
We want to invest the time and effort as a school community to take pride in our local area and community and prevent litter being blown up into the bushland at the base of Mt Ainslie and down ANZAC parade.
Some of the litter in the bushlands in the area is also from visitors to the Mt Ainslie lookout and pedestrians who walk around behind our school and use the barbeque facilities behind the War Memorial, however we want our students to take responsibility for their community hygiene and foster a renewed sense of pride.
We want the students themselves to be the leaders in this special project and to teach the rest of the school.
The implementation of the event
Campbell High participated in Celebrating Democracy Week by getting our youngest students in Year 7 to volunteer to spend considerable class time, and their recess and lunch breaks, cleaning up the litter around the outer perimeters of our school grounds, and also in the native bushland bordering our school.
Twenty-seven Year 7s and their families, plus the SOSE faculty and Science teacher in charge of community environmentalism, participated in every stage of the program. Many students showed real intelligence when dealing with dangerous or inappropriate items found in the clean up. Many also showed real leadership acting as team leaders during the cleaning up and the education program at the War Memorial. I had more volunteers than needed for the school newsletter and assembly write-ups and explanations.
For obvious health and safety reasons, we advised parents and provided the students with rubber gloves, large, strong garbage bags, soaps and sunscreen.
We took the students who volunteered for the entire week to lunch at the War Memorial Outpost café as a thank you for their effort and their pride in their school and local community.
Conclusion
The student volunteers received awards and wrote articles on the class project for the school newsletter, which is sent to parents. We are organising a PowerPoint presentation for the next assembly in order to inform the whole school that 'every piece of litter damages our environment'.
The students who took the digital photos did a great job creatively shooting 'before' and 'after' the clean-up. The entire Special project was designed and intended to be 'student-centred' with no pressure or forced involvement.
By getting our Year 7s to take part and explain this project to the rest of the school, students will start challenging each other about being more respectful and proud of their community. It fostered team-work in a practical activity that the students can directly see the positive results of, and helped develop their written and public speaking skills.