A boys’ education program at Greenwell Point Public School, on the south coast, has evolved into a whole-school project that is building confidence and environmental awareness.

Greenwell Point Public parent and casual teacher Mark McCormick loaned the school a block of land that he thought would be useful for an environmental program. The school decided to build a farm, which was named “Gottabee Green”.

The school’s acting principal Janine Hopwood said boys from Year 5 and 6 were initially involved in the project which began in Term 1, 2007. The boys were trained to be responsible for building the “chook pen, compost heap and vegie gardens”. Now the senior boys are group leaders, “modelling what you have to do on a given activity,” Ms Hopwood said.

The school’s senior boys and girls now work on the farm each Monday on a week-around basis – boys one week, girls the next. Other students get involved by feeding lunch scraps to the farm’s chickens. Ms Hopwood said the farm had added another dimension to the students’ education, encouraging team-building, verbal communication and “a mind of being environmentally conscious”.

Gottabee Green had also been good for the students’ self-esteem. “To see that you can achieve even if it’s not in an academic area – that’s been important for some of our students,” Ms Hopwood said.

The farm also provided a welcome break from the regular school routine. “We get our classroom work out of the way, and then we’re learning in a different way,” she said.