Burrumbuttock students were able to showcase their environmental sustainability projects when one of Australia's leading gardening gurus dropped in.
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After several months of research and development, chook-loving Burrumbuttock Primary School student Isabella Sherman contacted Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis to ask how to make the best chicken run for her school's feathered friends.
To Isabella's surprise and excitement, Mr Georgiadis took time out of his recent tour schedule to make an in-person visit to the school while in town for the Albury Gardenesque festival.
The students led Mr Georgiadis through the school's edible kitchen garden and native garden, with the jewel in the crown being Isabella's recently completed chicken run that tracks along the edge of the school boundary.
"Something like this is an example of nature being brought right into the school grounds," Mr Georgiadis said.
"Things like the native plant garden have everything about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) written all over it.
"You hear about STEM but I'm seeing STEM. I'm seeing the stems of plants and I'm seeing the STEM of education right through here," he said.
He said the enviable grounds of Burrumbuttock Primary School had created a valuable learning environment for its 28 student population.
"They're building a living ecology around the border of the school," Mr Georgiadis said.
"They are already observing the arrival of native pollinators to their bee and insect hotels."
Burrumbuttock Primary School has put their school grounds to work over several years, engaging nearby Wirraminna Environmental Education Centre to assist in design and delivery of sustainability and regeneration projects and nature play education.
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Mr Georgiadis said inner city schools encountered different challenges in delivering environmental sustainability education, which is a cross-curricular priority in the NSW syllabus.
"It is making the curriculum live and breathe, not just in four walls," Mr Georgiadis said.
"There are a lot of ways that small inner city schools are doing it. They have to value the land more because they don't have much.
"You don't need the grounds of Burrumbuttock to create outdoor learning, connection to nature and nature play."
Isabella said she was proud of her efforts to see the chicken run built, which will remain at the school as a legacy for the next generation of students as she heads off to high school. She said she enjoyed showing her project to a TV personality whom she admired.
"I was just asking him if he had any tips on how to build the chook run," Isabella said.
"I don't even think it was done when I reached out."
After a morning tea of fruit and quiche with the students, Mr Georgiadis headed next door for a tour of Wirraminna, to which centre operators have been inviting him for several years.
"To come to visit a school for me is one of the highest privileges and I value every second that I have, I really do," Mr Georgiadis said.
"To hold a conversation with these children, that is what it s about."
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