St Michael’s College – Primary Campus, Beverley, South Australia, responds to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ Goal: Cry of the Earth

St Michael’s College is a Catholic school in the Lasallian tradition which is committed to the human and Christian education of the young, especially the poor. Attuned to Pope Francis’ call to ecological conversion and action, the school continues to provide opportunities for the children and young people to develop the key capabilities, skills, and dispositions to be leaders for the world God desires. Ms Cathie Gaffney, Reception teacher and Earth Mates member (team of staff) acknowledges with gratitude a student led sustainability initiative recently implemented in the school in response to Laudato Si’ Goal, Cry of the Earth.

“On Wednesday 15 November, St Michael’s College - Primary Campus, Beverley, participated in our first ‘Sustainability Day’. We are very focused on school recycling, growing our school garden, looking after our chickens, and keeping a clean and sustainable school.

Activities were run by our YEL’s (Youth Environmental Leaders) and FSCL’s (Faith Service Community Leaders), who did an amazing job teaching us new skills such as reusable crafts, wetlands planting and monitoring, revegetating our nature play area, building wicking beds and rock painting. The rocks were then used to decorate our Nature Play. There was also some fun cooking with the produce from our garden. A highlight was the smoothie bikes - the teachers (or Year 6’s) had to use pedal power to make some healthy smoothies – they were delicious!

One of the activities was a ‘Chicken Chat’. The Year 2 students booked some sessions to see, feed, cuddle and say hi to our girls and learn a few new things about chickens.

They learnt what types of chickens our girls are (Isa Browns), what they like to eat and what they cannot eat, how they cheekily visit our garden to eat the spinach and kale and what they are doing when they are foraging.

After a cuddle and a feed, we went back to class for a Kahoot! to test their knowledge on our chickens. They worked in teams and did very well in remembering lots of information about ‘Chicky Chick’, ‘Sparkle’, ‘Ronny’ and ‘Chooky’.

We would like to thank all teachers for supporting this wonderful day of outdoor environmental learning, and connection with nature.”

Live Jesus in our hearts forever!

Lasallian Laudato Si’ Animators