St Albert’s started our Learning for Sustainability work off to a great start when we hosted our September Swishing event. Pupils, parents, teachers and community members were encouraged to bring in items from home (clothes, toys, books, ICT or electronic gadgets) that they wished to trade for something new.

The event was cashless, as we wanted to promote the message of a circular economy, where we prioritise re-purposing and re-cycling items and increase the products lifespans!

As Learning for Sustainability is our IDL context this term – it seemed fitting to host the event!

Watch this space because we hope to make our Swishing Events a regular, monthly occurence!

On Friday 25th, we hosted a Winter Swishing event where pupils swapped winter accessories, clothing, toys, books aaaaand – thanks to Malaika Hunter’s awesome idea – old Halloween costumes!

It’s such a positive, sustainable opportunity for parents, pupils and community members to get involved in! As we at St Albert’s are continually promoting Learning for Sustainability, we want to encourage the re-purposing and recycling of second hand items – and giving products a longer lifespan!

We hope to see you at next month’s Swishing event!

Miss Cohen

 

On Wednesday, we were visited by three judges from Education Scotland, as we were finalists in the Learning for Sustainability category in the Scottish Education Awards. 🤩🤩🎊🎊

We decided to host a Skills Swap to improve the aesthetics of our Outdoor space. Hector’s Mum, Alisha, kindly offered to come in and show us how to up-cycle and repurpose old car wheel alloys. We cleaned and began painting them with waterproof paint, and will finish them off at Friday’s Skills Swap.

Miss Bull and P1 have also been working in partnership with the Glasgow Wood Recyling and they had repurposed wood to make into new planters! Our arty helpers used stencils and acrylic paint to jazz them up – they are looking beautiful already! We’re hoping to get some herbs, flowers and veggies grown in them.

Well done all! We will post an update when they have a new home outside!

💛♻️🌿🍃💐🌷🌺🌸🌼

Last week, Primary 7 were visited by the lovely Lauren from Glasgow Repair Cafe. We discussed the Repair Cafe, and its role in Glasgow and further afield. We learned that the first Repair Cafe to be set up was in the Netherlands!

In Glasgow, the R.C. set up drop-in workshops and sessions at various venues to promote the importance of the Circular Economy model for Sustainability; Locavore, Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow Autonomous Space. They aim to extend the life spans of products and foster an atmosphere of repairing and caring for our belongings; electronics, ceramics, clothes, toys, gadgets, bikes etc.

Here’s a really good video that Lauren showed us to explore the scale of consumption and production – all for the effort of one, solitary plastic spoon! It’s funny but also really hard-hitting!

Here is a link to the Repair Cafe’s website – you should check it out and find out when the next workshop is being hosted!

Home

I’m sure everyone has an item they’ve been hoarding because it’s broken but we haven’t brought ourselves to research how to fix it. Well – the R.C. make our lives much easier by having trained volunteers at hand to service and repair our goods!

Thanks again for visiting Lauren – your work is inspiring!

#LearningforSustainability

#CircularEconomy

As our school focus was on Fairtrade Fortnight this week, we invited Miss Cohen’s Mum (Grace) and her Aunty Teresa in to talk about their upcycling tales. Grace talked about how therapeutic it can be to craft and just switch off from everything else. Teresa discussed its positive impact on the world if we re-use, recycle and re-purpose “old” things.

We were shown how to “distress” wood using a special type of paint called crackling paint. It was cool! 😎

Teresa taught us how to use stencils to print different patterns and designs on to wood and furniture.

We looked at how to use old books and an origami style method of folding paper to make a hedgehog shape. I’m sure we will definitely be trying that out at home!

Grace and Teresa have an Instagram page called ananke_furniture; check out more of their upcycling projects on there!

Thanks again ladies!

😍❤️

 

As part of this week’s Skills Swap, and because our school focus for the week was Languages, we hosted a speedy language exchange workshop. There were lots of languages on offer to learn; Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Punjabi, Mandarin, Korean, Swahili, French and Italian! 🇧🇴🇩🇿🇳🇫🇱🇧🇪🇺🇫🇷

We had loads of fun rotating around the different intercambio stations and learning the basics/essential phrases in different mother tongues!

Thank you to all the speakers who contributed, you were very inspiring! Merci beaucoup! Gracias a todos 😍👌🏽

I

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Hello!

Welcome to the St Albert’s Skills Swap blog where we will be keeping you updated with our news and upcoming Skills exchange workshops.

We have a notice board at the front entrance of our school with all necessary contact information should you wish to participate or learn more about “What’s on offer” and why we are joining this forward-thinking, sustainable movement.

If you need any more help or wish to participate, please do get in touch and we will happily send you some info or meet in person to learn more about our Social Enterprise project!

Miss Cohen can be contacted on gw17cohennadine@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk or via phoning the school office on 0141 429 1983.

Thanks! ❤️♻️🌎