AQUILA ONE "a brighter victoria"

Task

To improve the VJC school environment.

Objective:

While the Victorian community is always a warm and welcoming place, the physical structure of the school is not really representative of the vibrant nature of our Victorians.

The physical infrastructure of the school having been around for 25 years, this opportunity to customise and personalise the hardware of our school will allow Victorians to repossess it on our own terms.

Victorians will be able to design parts of the school to truly represent their identity, resulting in a greater sense of familiarity and resonance with their environment.

Target Group: J1

Time Period: The bidding and planning process would be scheduled to take place from Term 1 Week 7. During this period of time, the J1s would have completed their CCA trials and council elections to be able to engage in this event more actively. Furthermore, since it is still near the start of the year, the J1s can use this opportunity to further bond with their new classmates.

Timeline

(Over a two-week period (10 days), with the 10^th being the actual day of the event)

Day 1: Bidding for Projects

Day 2-5: Project Planning

Day 5: Submission of Proposal + Editing and Finalisation of Action Plan

Day 6-8: Editing and Finalisation of Action Plan

Day 9: Briefing for Event Day

Day 10: Execution of Project

Bidding of projects

Every class will be given the opportunity to bid for their desired project categories. After which, they will be able to innovate on how they will go about fulfilling their allotted tasks.

Planning for project completion

Classes will then have to innovate and submit a proposal of what the class intends to do to fulfil their category. This will take place during CT periods.

These proposals would have to be assessed and approved by their respective civics tutors before the actions are to be carried out.

Their proposals should include the following:

- Main idea for the project

- Action plan

- Materials required (including an estimated amount of money required to purchase the materials)

Intended projects should be completable in 10 hours, which will be accounted for as CIP hours. Students will be briefed prior to event day. The briefing is covered under the section ‘project day’

Classes will be given a day to finalise their action plans after their proposals have been approved.

Project day

-School will start as per normal.

-Students will report in the college PE attire to carry out the day’s task.

-Students will embark on their projects after assembly.

-Students will settle their lunches and dinners as a class. They may choose to make orders from the school canteen, order food into the college. They are not allowed to leave the college without permission.

-Upon completion, projects will be checked on before classes in charge are released. Classes can be released when they are done (projects certified completed) at the minimal college dismissal time at 12.30 p.m. All students have to be accounted for before they may be dismissed as a class.

-Short class reflection to sum up the day’s activity.

Mini Projects

1) Painting of walls and pillars.

Reasons: After taking a look around the school, we found that areas such the walls and pillars are plain and lack a uniquely Victorian touch; there is very little with which the Victorian community can resonate and feel a sense of connectedness with. As such, we came up with the idea to allow students to personalise the walls, to design a part of the school that is truly their own, so as to encourage a sense of ownership of and responsibility for the school environment in our Victorians.

Our objective is to improve the VJC environment, enabling it to be more comfortable for students by allowing them to customise it on their own and feel a sense of connectedness and ownership towards it.

How is it done: Approximately 25 classes (or 625 students) will be involved in this mini project.

Classes will be further split into repainters (5 classes) and mural painters (20 classes). Areas selected for repainting include walls along corridors and classrooms.

a) Re-painting

Areas to be repainted cream white are walls along corridors. Areas to be repainted blue are the classroom walls and other special rooms. Classroom doors can also be repainted if time permits.

b) Mural painters.

Murals can be painted on corridor walls or at the back of classrooms. Mural painters will be required to do some research and plan out on the murals they want to draw beforehand. It is advisable that the murals have significance to everybody, or has motivational value. The planned murals will then be screened by teachers to ensure that it meets expectations. (No crude words or pictures, racism or other sensitive issues). On the actual day, the mural painters will paint at their respective venues.

Safety precautions:

a) At all times. a protective layer (newspapers, canvas sheets) has to be laid over the floors, or furniture in the classroom. This is to ensure that school property will be left untouched.

b) Students have to be warned strongly not to play with the paints or to paint each other. This may result in paint being swallowed or entering the eyes and hence prohibited.

c) First-aid club members will be on standby (just in case of an accident)

Note: All equipment required will have to be bought by the students themselves.

Reasons: We found many bare patches of grasses in VJC that could have been put into better use. In order to improve the environment and provide a soothing place for study, we suggest that these patches be used for gardening purposes. Furthermore, a garden brightens up our scenery, a perfect match to our slogan: A brighter Victoria.

Our objective, other than to improve the school environment, is also to beautify and diversify the school compound, helping students learn more about horticulture and saving the environment by going green (e.g. organic farming). This also encourages teamwork and interactions between students, and teaches students to be more responsible.

How is it done: Classes in charge will set up the garden, plotting the areas for organic farming, exhibitions and then they will start planting as well as putting up the information boards for the exhibitions. A representative from each class will be sent to a briefing and demonstration by horticulture club members to learn how to plant properly. It will be a one-time demonstration, so it will not be too taxing on the members of the club.

a) Organic farm (3 classes or approximately 75 students)

Students will start setting up ‘flower pots’ and preparing them for planting, like filling the pots with fertile soil. Students are expected to do their own research for the kinds of plants that would be suitable for cultivation within the context of our school. The Horticultural club will conduct a demonstration to teach students how to do basic planting and potting.

b) Exhibitions (2 classes or approximately 50 students)

Information on topics related to the environment, (e.g. organic farming, saving Earth, going green, information about the types of plants grown) will be showcased. Students can approach the school’s horticulture club OR even biology teachers for help and advice. These exhibitions will be taken down after a week.

Each class will be assigned the booths in the Concourse, and the series of events will be as follows: gardening, set up booths, design booths.

Safety Precautions:

a) Be careful of self and people around while using heavy gardening equipment.

b) Always remember to keep hydrated while working under hot sun.

c) Selected crops/plants must not be poisonous/dangerous, try to keep to edible crops/plants.

d) To avoid overcrowding, only one cohort (JC1) will be involved in this event.

Why is this project worth doing?

We can gain the opportunity to redesign areas of the school the way we like it while bonding with our classmates during the planning and execution of PROJECT LUMOS.

The top two classes per mini project may win ice cream for either Happy Days Café, or the cold drinks and snacks stall in our school canteen. There will be a day off provided for the event and a commemorative plaque will be put up to recognise the efforts of this particular batch to the improvement of the school environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we see that our project not only improves our school environment through physical means, it also helps to promote stronger bonds between classmates and forge a greater sense of class identity.

In having customised their school, students will have a greater sense of ownership and pride in our school environment as we have been granted more say in how said environment will look like.

Students will also be more inclined to take responsibility for the cleanliness of their school environment, as we took part in personalising it. Our group hopes that (in alignment with our slogan: A brighter Victoria) this will help strengthen the pride Victorians have in the brighter, more vibrant VJ we have helped improve.