The Year 4 ‘Enviro’ program at The Geelong College in Australia began in 2001 and strives to connect young people with the natural world and teach sustainable living.

The year is built around the question, “How can we create a good tomorrow?” Students spend hours each week outdoors and are frequently challenged to improve their immediate environment and understand their place within it. Features of the program include: regular nature walks; ponding trips to the nearby Barwon River; the growing, cooking, sharing and eating of food; revegetation projects; trips to local farms and natural places; waste and recycling centre visits; identifying and acting upon school resource-use issues; and connecting with local people who are passionately involved in environmental work.

The program grew from the recognition that the children at the school knew little, if anything, about their local flora and fauna. Many children, it seemed, had grown up developing no meaningful connection to the natural world. They seemed to barely notice the natural world around them. Future citizens would likely have difficulty in successfully presiding over the world’s natural living diversity if they remained largely unaware of its existence.

The program is now in its 15^th year and has seen a number of changes in staffing and consequent shifts in emphasis.

Simone Boyd, Will Johnston and Richard Hanley make up the current team of teachers in the program and have been working together for nearly years.

Simone Boyd grew up on a farm in the Riverina. She left home to study Primary Education at The University of Melbourne where she developed her interest in environmental issues. She loves to teach young people the art of reading and writing and she loves good books. She is a passionate teacher, learner, gardener and cook.

Will Johnston is the other class teacher in the program. He grew up on the Mornington Peninsula and was excited about native plants and birds from a very young age. He still plays guitar with adequate skill in a little known band, played two seasons of cricket as a professional in the North Yorkshire-South Durham League (UK) and spent a year on teaching exchange with his family near the Rockies in Alberta, Canada in 2008. He completed a Masters of Education in 2010. His paper examined the impacts of the Enviro program.

Richard Hanley is the gardener and cook for the Enviro program, and was a flautist and antique dealer. He creates beautiful garden spaces from unused stuff that he procures from anywhere and everywhere. In the last 4 years Richard has helped young people create 149 meals using the garden produce as a base – no two meals have been the same.

In this blog we hope to share our world, our successes and failures, as we strive to help young people forge deep connections with nature and engage them with the challenge of living sustainably.

We also hope that through this blog, we can connect with and learn from a diverse range of people engaged in similar work.