On Thursday 22nd August Templestowe Park Primary School hosted EASL’s Term 3 ResourceSmart Schools (RSS) Progress Workshop.
RSS schools gathered from across the 7 LGA’s to learn from this inspirational 2-star school. The day opened with a presentation from sustainability coordinator Lori Conn, who took the group on a deep dive on how TPPS weave sustainability into their school curriculum and community.
Sustainability is embedded in the culture of the school as the whole school participates in initiatives including: student sustainability representatives checking lights in rooms, leaky taps, ensuring food packaging is going home; conducting bin audits; chicken coop monitors. We know teachers are time poor and TPPS showed how utilising the student body is not only effective but vital for continuing sustainability practices in their school.
Lori also shared their whole school curriculum links to Sustainability, including STEM, Sustainability in Inquiry unit, First Nations Curriculum links from pre-6 and each year level has sustainability as a Specialist Area for a semester. Following the presentation the group were taken on a tour of the school to see the hands on activities in action.
A hit with the tour and their school community is the cleverly designed chicken coop, that not only helps reduce organic waste along with their compost and worm farms, but the eggs are used for an ‘Eggscellent Award’ to the student who has shown excellence in nude food lunches and remembered to compost.
After our tour seeing these practices in motion we broke for a scrumptious lunch, and got stuck into ResourceSmart School admin. The room had new staff introduced to RSS for the first time and pros that have been at it for years. Each attendee received personalised administrative support from our facilitators, which lead to brainstorming as a collective for common sustainability issues at schools such as procuring recycled paper and reading waste bills.
Attending our Progress Workshops gives teachers 6 hours of PL, which not only ticks of hours for their personal learning but also counts towards RSS specific Professional development.
A special thank you to Lori, Neil, the Sustainability Captains, and Templestowe Park Primary school for their hospitality and for inspiring attendees with their remarkable sustainability initiatives.
Want to attend one of these special events? Keep an eye on our Upcoming Opportunities and EASL Humanitix page for Term 4’s Progress Workshop.