Letting Students Take the Lead Through Thematic Events
Allan Hardy, Principal
Thematic events such as Earth Week allow students to take leadership roles while they contribute to causes that are important to them.
Throughout this past year, our Student Life team has organized a wide range of thematic weeks designed to bring prominence and awareness to issues relevant to the lives of our students. Besides an opportunity to educate, these weeks also give students a chance to lead, as they work closely with our staff in the planning and execution of the week’s events.
This week we are celebrating Earth Week, as Earth Day takes place on April 22. A variety of break time and lunch hour activities have been scheduled, all of which are intended to help students better understand how their day-to-day actions can support sustainability and the preservation of the environment. In the same way that an exclamation mark closes a sentence on a dramatic note, Friday’s Walk-to-School Day works in a similar way by celebrating the collective commitment of students and staff to making lifestyle changes in support of climate change.
Having thematic events run for a week also enables the organizers to vary the activities and provide students with different points of entry. Next week, the school’s focus is on the issues affecting girls and women around the world. One of the activities planned is having Greenwood parent and award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal share her experience as a woman in the film industry with students at Monday’s assembly.
In May the topic of resilience and managing stress will be examined, as students begin to prepare for end-of-year evaluations. During that week a school-wide physical fitness activity will take place to help students see that physical activity is a good way to manage stress. There will also be a mindfulness lunch hour activity in the theatre.
As parents are aware, teenagers sometimes become overly preoccupied with their own existence. Dedicating some elements of school life to global and social concerns enables teenagers to look beyond their individual selves, and in doing so, develop some perspective about their lives and the lives of others.