By Mikayla van Loon
Lilydale Heights College (LCH) has been crowned as the Curriculum Leadership School of the Year (Secondary) at the ResourceSmart Schools Awards for 2023.
Attending the awards ceremony on Thursday 15 June, LHC sustainability leader Shannon Sargeant said it came as a welcome surprise to receive the recognition.
“I’m still in a bit of shock because you do your bit but most people in this field are quite humble about what they’re doing and they think everybody else is doing better,” she said.
“So it’s a really nice recognition that actually we’re doing great stuff. It’s not good, it’s great.”
In a concept decided on by the College’s sustainability team, students were challenged during 2022 to stream their waste initiatives by implementing a collection of hard to recycle items such as batteries, tablet blister packs and oral hygiene products.
“I applaud the students, teachers, school staff and volunteers at Lilydale Heights College who
are achieving great things in sustainability and showing outstanding leadership,” Sustainability Victoria Interim CEO Matt Genever said.
“You are all tremendous role models and I know your work will inspire other schools to take action.”
For the students who form the sustainability leadership team, meeting and learning from other schools about how they are tackling environmental initiatives was an added bonus of the ResourceSmart Schools Awards ceremony.
“It was fun to see how we could figure out more sustainable ways for both our schools,” Anastasia said.
To also finally get the recognition for the work and effort they put into their roles, Jack said, was extremely rewarding.
“We’re finally being recognised because a lot of the kids at school don’t seem to be that invested in it,” he said.
With the whole school watching on from a live stream, it was a big celebration not only at the MCG but also across the school grounds.
Shannon said the reaction and engagement from the school community since winning the award has already increased, with many more students interested in the sustainability initiatives.
“It feels like we’re starting to get that student momentum because I felt really good about our curriculum, but it’s the students’ involvement that we really need to build on and I think this will draw kids in and decide it is worth getting involved to make a difference,” she said.
Hopeful the motivation will continue, Shannon said next term students will create a bottle top mural after running a house based competition, while sustainability captain Lachlan wants to get a nesting box building project going.
For term four, Shannon said being National Recycling Week she hopes to host a larger event to get the community involved in a ‘buy, swap, sell’ format, with a curriculum focused on fast fashion.
“On top of that, we’re working with our First Nations advocate to develop an indigenous food garden and yarning circle and we’re going to start propagating indigenous plants.”
LCH would like to build a community of empowered young people who care for and want to challenge the current practices harming the environment, making this award the perfect catalyst to grow that vision.
“It is important to me because I love the environment. It’s always been like something I care for. So it makes me happy to know that I can care for it as much as it helps us because if we wreck it, we have nowhere else to live. No earth two,” Anastasia said.
“The fact that it might not be here is not something I want to happen. Even if it’s a small part, I want to do what I can to stop it,” Jack said.
