Seek7: Empowering Students to Tackle Global Water Challenges
At Santa Maria College, our mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world.
This is why in Seek7, all Year 7 students are taught about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030 and are asked what they can do to help achieve Goal Six: clean water and sanitation for all.
Seek7 is part of the College’s continuum of the Years 5 to 10 emPOWER learning projects. These projects provide opportunities for our students to take a flexible approach to their learning in order to do deep work developing global competencies and essential skills.
Seek7 is a term-long project focused specifically on students’ critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration skills. To really highlight the subject connections between the geography they are learning about in Humanities & Social Sciences and their work on liquids and solvents in Science, students have completed a series of seven challenges ranging from local to global in scale. All reinforced the importance of water and its effective management to sustain life on earth now and into the future.
The Year 7s participated in an excursion to Point Walter with Nearer to Nature, a Water Corporation incursion, a United Nations SDG workshop and had three expert guest speakers: Matt Fossey from the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation, Kirilee King formerly from the Swan River Management Trust and Jen Medbury from Edith Cowan University.
At the end of this term of rich learning, students developed an inquiry question provoked by United Nations SDG Six: clean water and sanitation. They researched and developed these into an idea for change, which was displayed at their exhibition afternoon and evening in the Plaza.
The projects presented by the Year 7s were exceptional, displaying a high level of creativity and innovation. Their inquiries delved into critical topics such as water conservation, the protection of WA marine ecosystems, and improving access to clean water, among other pressing issues.
During the afternoon, our Year 6 students had the privilege of attending the showcase alongside staff, providing them with a glimpse of the incredible work they can anticipate when they reach Year 7. Furthermore, in the evening, we extended an invitation to parents, allowing them to explore and appreciate their daughters’ incredible projects.
Pope Francis writes, “Access to safe, drinkable water is a basic and universal human right since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for exercising other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity.”
We are proud of our Year 7 students for using courage and compassion to wrestle with the knotty and important problem of water access. We want our students to be drivers rather than passengers in their learning (and their lives!), and our Year 7s showed that they are up for the challenge.
The Value of Student Voice – Jennifer Oaten
“At Santa Maria College, we are not only given the opportunity, but we are encouraged by our teachers and each other to voice our opinions, concerns and ideas—to continue moving forward as a school and as a community. Student voice is integral for growth, and allows for us, as students to have an active role in shaping our education.”
Shining a Spotlight on Our Student Ministry Team
This week, we shine a light on a dynamic group of students – our Ministry team, who are doing wonderful things in the Faith space.
Weekly Wrap Up: Term 2, Week 3, 2024
This Weekly Wrap Up is brimming with activity including the Freeze Frame Opera, the Sisterhood Series and Year 9 French.
- Collaboration, ConnectingLearning2Life, Creativity, CriticalThinking, Featured, Learning4Life, Students
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
