Two dreams for a school of the future…

1. A Dream for Canteen and Curriculum

Zoe and Zane ponder the plethora of healthy options from the canteen menu developed by their friends in 8N during last week’s health and nutrition elective. Zane opts for the Enviro-grown organic pumpkin and leek soup with chives, chervil and cheddar cheese. He is provided with his returnable mug and spoon. Zoe tries the roast pumpkin, pancetta and parsley panini served on a recycled paper napkin. They marvel at the creativity of their peers in planning this week’s menu. The healthy low fat, low GI and delicious menu is hard to resist. Both students notice that their concentration and energy levels have really improved in their afternoon lessons since they have been eating well.

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Through their detailed study of food labels and the food industry in Year 7, students like Zoe and Zane have a good understanding of what they eat and how food is produced. They have participated in debates over food production and have visited local farms to witness battery hens and broad acre farming. They have also written about the ethics of food production. Through the Year 4 program they have experienced the joys of growing and eating their own food.

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Year 6 students, Flora and Finn have been studying healthy eating and the main food groups in their science and health classes. Recently, in a media class, they helped redesign the menu displayed in the canteen so that it was organised more carefully into the main food groups. The plan was to help people think more carefully about their diet and to develop healthier eating habits.

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Priscilla and Pete, the Year 5 teachers are having a coffee (a latte and a flat white) at lunchtime in the extended canteen seating area. They look out across several groups of children who are sitting, talking and eating their lunch in a range of pleasant, green and shady spaces. They remember times when the bulk of students would walk around the school eating their food. It dawns on them that they haven’t asked a child to pick up a piece of litter since the canteen stopped selling any product with packaging. The only waste now goes to the chooks, ducks, pigs and worms. They also believe that since the healthy menu has been in effect they have been teaching more engaged and productive students.

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Thelma, a Year 3 student, opens her lunch box at snack time. Will she eat the apple or the pear? She is looking forward to her home-baked flapjack – but she’ll save that for lunchtime, after she’s finished her fresh ham, fetta, home-grown tomato and rocket roll. There is no packaging at all in her lunchbox because the schools policy of ‘nude food’ has now reached everybody. There are no landfill bins in the playground (a first for schools in the region). The school’s emphasis on food education has reached into her family home and her lunches often include home-grown produce.

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Max the groundsman is happy at work. He grabs an apple from the orchard for a morning snack, helps two Year 5 students with a recycling task and remembers the day when he picked out over fifty pieces of plastic from the wetland. Today there is no litter. He can focus on the joys of sowing a tiny wheat crop with the Year 4’s. He chuckles as he walks quietly by the award-winning sculpture made by a Year 8 art elective from his decommissioned leaf-blowers. In response to be being asked to think about how he could contribute to creating a quiet and respectful learning environment, he now uses a rake.

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Ethel and Ian, the canteen staff both love their job. After working with the Year 8 health and nutrition elective, they are keen to try out a couple of new salads with white cheeses and herbs from the canteen herb garden. Ethel and Ian serve up healthy and tasty food to young people who relish the food they create. A recent in-service that they attended together helped them understand even more about the value of good food for growing bodies and minds, and they have since developed more  delicious and healthy recipes for healthy snacks.

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Food consumption at school is important. Everything sold at the canteen, indeed, all the food that students eat while in our care, reflects our values. Our students receive strong messages about our values, nutrition, food science and good health through the food served over the counter at the school canteen. Whether we recognise it or not, our school canteens – the good, the bad and the ugly – are a part of our school curriculum.

We all need healthy food so that we can reach for the stars.

2. A dream about the school landscape as inspiration for learning…

Sam is dropped off at school in a safe zone next to Aberdeen Street. He enters through a beautiful welcoming stone entrance inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Surrounded by a wealth of diverse local native plants, he meanders up the wide path bordered by shade trees and a vigorous diverse understorey. A skink scuttles under a hollow log. Wrens hop around him and firetails dart for cover. He passes a basalt rock seating area, rounds the corner to the centre circle. He spots Reuben, a soccer playing mate, and they are soon laughing and sharing weekend stories. Music plays. This morning it is Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello no. 1 in G major. They head off to class.

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For Bridie the school grounds offer a range of places to be at recess and lunch time. Will she head up the hill to the river garden, admire the view and eat under the whispering casuarinas? Will she select from the healthy choices at the canteen and sit in the contemporary courtyard garden which features sculptures from their art lessons last term? Will she play football on the oval? Will she watch the dragonflies in the ephemeral wetland? Will she play down ball? Will she find a shady place under a favourite tree in the arboretum of exotic trees (the gingko, the cork oak, the banksias, the copper beech, Francesca’s oak or the kauri pine) and chat with friends?  Pete will most likely be there…

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Jack, the Year 7 teacher parks his car next to the indigenous garden bed of dianella, lomandra, austrodanthonia, wahlenbergia and kennedia. He strides down over the ephemeral wetland boardwalk, hears the chorus of frogs and notices the grey teal dabbling for invertebrates in the shallows. Spring is in the air. He checks the blue sky and thinks today would be the perfect day to take a reading lesson down to the amphitheatre.

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Daisy the grounds worker turns up early to spread some mulch in the new seasonal flowering calendar garden. However, what excites her most is the work that she’ll be doing with 5B at 12.30pm on their biodiversity garden project, assisting in the creation of butterfly habitat in a neglected corner on the southern end of the property. The plants are ready and the kids are keen – having successfully established the ‘skink garden’ – a project they began when they were in Year 1.

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The school principal walks from her office for a morning meeting. As she walks she is surrounded by beauty, diversity and colour. She sees a maths class measuring the circumference of the circular, paved scented garden. She allows herself a moment of self-congratulation as she thinks how wonderful it has been to ensure that her school continues to deliver a strong sense of environmental stewardship through its use of outdoor spaces.

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In schools, we could all be striving to create gardens and outdoor spaces that inspire. Teachers, students and parents could be given the opportunity to create a beautiful and productive garden as a learning resource. They should feel empowered by support from the school leaders and be given the freedom to think and do. The school grounds offer all of us endless opportunities to understand more about who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. Our values are reflected in our outdoor spaces.

We need inspiring outdoor environments from which to reach for the stars. We should engage in the challenge of teaching young people how to care for the planet and the obvious place to start is the land on which the school stands.