The first whole staff professional development sessions are being held around Melbourne over the first few weeks of Term 1 by our facilitators. While we have had contact with the Principals, Assistant Principals and Sustainability Coordinators leading to the schools opening, this was the first opportunity to meet the whole teaching team and to broadly introduce the program.

We have had some great discussions with the staff around the opportunities that lie in this PPP partnership to embed sustainability in all aspects of the school operations from Day 1. We discussed the sustainable features included in the building design and the projects that the staff and students would like to implement.

For a significant part of the workshop, the staff worked in groups on their school’s key sustainability strategic plan brainstorming the vision, policies and targets. A group focused on reviewing their curriculum planner to identify the areas of the Victorian Curriculum that can be taught through the lens of sustainability. Another group planned for distributing leadership and participation in sustainability at the school among teaching staff, admin, parents, students, executives and operational staff – an essential step to a whole school approach to sustainability.

PD session at Wilandra Primary School

John Henry PS teachers at their first ResourceSmart Schools PD session

The workshops ended on a high with most of the School’s Environment Management Plan (SEMP) complete, in preparation to be reviewed and approved by school council and contributing greatly to the first Core module of the program.

With the whole staff now on board and the SEMP nearly complete, we are on a roll to make sustainability a daily reality at the PPP schools!