It’s been a busy couple of weeks at the Australian Christian College with students enjoying a range of activities to mark Harmony Week and World Poetry Day.
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Students had an opportunity to sample some diverse international cuisine, share some poetry with the school community, and even had a visit from some friendly bikies.
Principal Sam Woods said the week stared off with a special Harmony Week assembly.
“We talked a little bit about how our differences are often more worth celebrating than dividing,” Mr Woods said.
“We then had an international lunch. We have a quite a multi-cultural staff, so we asked them to all bring in food from a variety of cultures.
“We sampled the fares at lunch time, which was great fun and the kids enjoyed it a lot.
“Tuesday was World Poetry Day, so we organised a poetry slam and all the students shared some poetry they had either written, or enjoyed.”
Mr Woods said students were encouraged to present poetry with a relevance to Harmony Week.
“Some of the poems celebrated Australia,” he said.
“Some focused on harmony and togetherness as an idea.
“We were amazed at how well they all did as public speaking is tough.”
On the Wednesday the college took the opportunity to have a coin drive.
“We asked everyone to bring in whatever spare change they could find,” Mr Woods said.
“We were raising money for chaplains working on the ground in Ukraine through our connection with the God Squad Motorcycle Club.
“They have a chapter in Ukraine and they’re using their bikes to get kids out of vulnerable situations.
“The idea was that each class would line up their coins, and the class with the longest line would get a prize.”
The generosity of the school community shone through and the coin drive raised more than $1000, from a school of just 76 students.
“That was unreal,” Mr Woods said.
“We’ll follow up with them in the next couple of weeks and talk to students about how the money they raised is helping kids going through some real and traumatic things on the other side of the world.“
To round out the week of celebrations and activities students transformed their basketball court into a giant chalk mural.
“As part of art lessons that week we looked at symbolism and about how symbolism gets a message across,” Mr Woods said.
“So we used symbols to get across the ideas of peace and unity and made the giant mural, which the kids thought was really cool.”