Using Laudato si’ as their principal text, Catherine McAuley Year 9 students put together a number of sustainability awareness campaigns.
The campaigns were in response to a challenge issued by Bernard Holland, director of Catholic Earthcare and came under the Parramatta Dioceses’ new Religious Education curriculum ‘Stewardship’ learning sequence. The Catholic Education Office used around 3000 student survey responses to create learning sequences that answered the students’ wonderings and questions.
Bernard Holland invited students to design environmental awareness campaigns that focused on at least two elements of creation.
Taking to the Genesis story, students identified several elements of Creation. Each student chose the element with which they felt a connection and could then opt to work in teams alongside students who had chosen a different Creation element from their own.
Religious Education coordinator, Genevieve Banks identified student choice as being a major factor in the students’ engagement with the learning sequence. Students chose their own element of Creation, they then formulated their own teams and were even able to choose the medium of presentation that would best express their learning.
Students began with the ‘Why’, designing a jingle for their elements of Creation that captured the need for action. They then came together to create an overall campaign jingle.
Students displayed an amazing level of creativity, using various media and different types of presentation.
Some wrote letters to local and state governments, some designed and created posters and world globe creations, while others created slideshows. There were the occasional rap song and some movies. One of the most moving being a satire of the seven days of creation where the audience was left wondering would God really now look upon creation and say “All I have made is good”. Working collaboratively students put their personal talents together into a campaign that provided opportunities for living stewardship.
As a follow up to the learning sequence several Year 9 students and CEDP Teaching Educator Bruce Carr travelled to the Mercy Sisters Rahamim Ecological Learning Community in Bathurst to further explore their interests in being good stewards of Creation.
Inspired by Pope Francis and the Vatican's attempts to be carbon neutral, there will also be further exploration into how uniting with our science and mathematics faculties there could be further development into renewable energy projects that see the essential connections of all their learnings
Student Reflection from Monique Vasquez
As a team, our learning journey through this Stewardship learning sequence challenged our creativity and understanding of how taking care of our earth correlated with our faith.
The idea of stewardship was presented in many forms through the team’s creative talents. The key question throughout the entire project was “how can we care for our common home?”
This was not just useful within a learning environment but we were able to apply it in our lives. As students, most of the things we learn are rarely applied in our lives to their full extent. However, with this question, we were not only learning the core religious values of being a steward of creation but how we can actively apply that to our lives.
We were given a term to create a campaign and then celebrated our learning by demonstrating to the rest of the class our ideas and strategies to help improve the earth. A flexible timetable made it less stressful which therefore made us more engaged in completing the project.
After we presented our celebration of learning, we were also asked for our insight, about how the project could be done better next time, this allowed us not only to review our own work but to become real creators of the new curriculum. This for us was considered vital as students are not usually asked for their insight, and therefore the curriculum rarely reflects student interests.
This project allowed us to complete something that would enhance our learning skills, religious knowledge and enhance our perspective on the world. We thoroughly enjoyed the topic as we had the opportunity to make a difference in this world, to make a change.
Bruce Carr is Teaching Educator Mission, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta. See Catholic Teacher blog: Out into the deep for more on the innovative change to the curriculum.