St Margaret’s Berwick Grammar Education Outdoors program is underpinned by a commitment to practical, effective, and holistic sustainability education.
We centre around three key concepts: personal sustainability, sustainable communities, and environmental sustainability. Through hands-on, experiential learning, students develop a profound appreciation of our precious natural environment and develop the skills, knowledge, and understanding required to live sustainably, not only as school students but throughout the rest of their lives.
Where classroom theory meets practical experience, bringing learning to life.
Outdoor experiences may be connected to specific subjects or topics where students visit a curriculum-linked location for example science students visiting a water treatment plant. Or they may be connected to the classroom and passions. Last year we held several video meetings from our lecture theatre with NASA – talking to mission control about the unmanned Mars mission and astronauts about space flight. These Science, Technology Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) focused activities fan the flames and ambitions of our students. Some of our girls have taken this to the next level having attended Space Camp in America, through partnerships the school fosters to make this happens. We don’t believe barriers and neither do our students.
Our outdoor education also features camps, where children spend several days away from the classroom and home.
These camps are focused on learning as well as character development targeting and re-enforcing different attributes each year of the student’s St Margaret’s Berwick Grammar journey. Camps are designed to build confidence, teamwork, self-reliance, negotiation, resilience, grit, gutsiness, and leadership, the soft skills that all students will need as they step out of our gates to university or the workforce as an employee or employer.
Year 9 has a particular focus on adverture and leadership learning, as this is often a point in a young person’s life when they need to refocus and engage with the learning process. In this year at our school, the Year 9’s currently participate in the Odyssey program which is completed at the end of Year 10.
City Camp
Students spend time looking at and solving social issues like homelessness building teamwork, organisation, and problem-solving skills.
Mountains
Students hike in the Victorian High Country helping them build teamwork, self-reliance, resilience, and leadership.
Arts
Students work on an arts project.
Queensland
Students currently head to Queensland where there is a focus on ecology and students work with researchers on projects, giving them opportunities to sail, swim, snorkel, and dive.
A broad range of activities students can participate in
There is a broad range of activities students can participate in, which include cultural trips to China, service trips to Thailand, exchange programs with sister schools, language exchange programs, and indigenous outback programs.
