Green Day

Here comes the green walking school bus of Pt Chevalier School, all decked in green to help draw attention to the importance of saving the world.

My school celebrated our Green/Environmental day by encouraging the students and staff to wear green. Most of us wore green, some were very original and made skirts out of the green recycle bags. Some came as frogs and turtles. It was very encouraging to see parents supporting this good cause.

Pt Chevalier School has just won a silver award for its contributions as an Enviro School.The Enviro Schools programme is run by the Enviroschools Foundation and partners including the Education Ministry to promote environmental education and sustainable schools.

Our enviro teacher Keren Rego says the students take part in a wide range of environmental activities and community projects, including a worm farm, fruit orchard and an organic vegetable garden.

The students grow meal worms in the class from the vegetables grown from the garden. In turn, the meal worms grown at the school are used to feed the zoo’s cotton-top tamarins and native birds.

That day, my lessons were about conserving water. I showed the children a photo of a tap which had a padlock, and children were not allowed to take water from it. A student from Africa was not convinced about saving water because we have so much water. I took the students round the school and show her how students waste water at the drinking fountains, and our new rain water tank. I wanted to press upon her that despite our abundance of water, we still should not waste it.

Ironically, that afternoon, after lunch, our school became a health hazard. The water supply was cut off. We had to ring the parents of all six hundred students to come and take them home.