Sustainability

The Student Environmental Action Group was sad to say goodbye to our Year 12 leaders, Mary and Yuhan. We wish them all the best for their exams in the coming weeks. They have led our group with enthusiasm and humour and will be missed!

Biodiversity Audit

The remaining SEALs will still be active this term. We will conduct a biodiversity audit of the school to update the Resource Smart Schools core module and the group has agreed to do this during a couple of lunchtimes in the next few weeks. This will involve surveying the school grounds for canopy trees, understory and ground cover, as well as identifying native plants. We will let you know the results!

Planting the Seed Project

The Planting the Seed project (see further details at https://www.kilbreda.vic.edu.au/our-college/sustainability/) began recently with our first visit to the site on the Mentone Foreshore. The degraded areas we will be caring for are currently full of weeds, with very few local native species. This first session involved hearing from the ecologists from Ecology and Restoration Australia about the project, identifying plants we would like to restore to the site and taking some cuttings from these plants.

The students were great at identifying their allocated plants to collect, using the resources provided by ERA. We then returned to school to propagate the cuttings. In total, we have 140 cuttings from seven different species! They are now safely housed in our greenhouse to establish over the summer. There will be a planting day in April next year. The Year 9 Environmental Science students and the Year 7, 8 and 9 SEALs were enthusiastic, helpful and hard-working!

Sarah Avitabile
Sustainability Leader

Living Justice

Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Perspective

This week, Sue Dempster and I had the pleasure of attending the MACS led Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Perspective held at the the Ian Potter Centre within the National Gallery of Victoria: This part of the three-day professional learning involved a guided tour of the “Wurrdha Marra” (meaning Many Mobs) exhibit. As far as immersions go, this was amazing! It was a visual experience of the Indigenous perspective that gave insight into their culture and their history prior to and during European invasion.

Following this tour we were then treated to a second (guided) exhibition of paralleled Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian artwork displayed in eras of time. It was fascinating to see the works of Roberts and McCubbin alongside traditional Aboriginal shields from Queensland archives created at the same time.

The exhibition is free and is well worth a visit!

Trish Moloney
Living Justice Leader