At Blackwattle we are keen on making impacts on a local and the wider community. We will start off at a typical day at school. Seeing as we are a senior campus we have a wide variety of subjects. With all our subjects come essays, text books and of course photo copies. Photo copies are usually kept in a nicely presented sleeve, or they may tend to rot in the bottom of our bag. There are those cases that we may not appreciate it. Our school does not have an enormous recycling program but you certainly wont find flock of papers flying around in our school. There are a couple of scrap paper boxes here and there. We are asked to use them and help out the environment and they become very useful when quick scribbles are needed to be written down somewhere. DING! The bells gone. Lunch time. What better way to celebrate then a game of basketball. We have two courts. These are readily available to use at recess and at lunch. These facilities can also be accessed on the weekend, after school and during the holidays. If your walk straight through the courts you will end up at the playing field. The same applies here. This green space is used on many occasions and can also be accessed by the public. Then we have our indoor basketball court – our own hall. Same size only inside and the hall is available to be rented out. DING! Lunch times over. YES! I don’t have a lesson this period so I am free to go home. Maybe I will do a bit of browsing first. All of Blackwattle is interested in browsing through shops. Our uniform is easily recognisable and we have a couple of shop-aholic’s amongst us. The more money we spend, the richer shop keepers get but not all of our money goes to ourselves.
Blackwattle is also concerned with the well being of numerous charities. A good example is the Red Cross. For a number of years Blackwattle has been asked to do the Red Shield Door Knocking appeal. Many of us graciously accepted but many students have independently sought out mediums of helping organisations by themselves. There have been cases where students have been acknowledged at school for their help with charities. A couple of times we receive words of appreciation by charities and organisations for the help of just one student trying to make a difference and setting out to do what he/she intended to do. The majority of times “thank you” and “congratulations” are passed on by his/her peers but you still get the odd couple of immature “loser, geek, goodie goodie”, words being passed on. You could say its jealousy but it comes to a stop.
Our code of conduct fixes and addresses those issues. We value acceptance of any type of legal form. Racial, gender, sexually orientated or any other form of discrimination is not tolerated. Warnings, suspensions and counselling are methods we adopt to help solve the situation and put it to an end. Another help we receive is by the SRC – the Student Representative Council. They receive notifications of problems and address the situation as best they possibly can. It is taken aboard as an issue of importance that all students enjoy their time at senior high school and that they do not put up with stressing situations besides assessments. We also have mentoring sessions once a fortnight. It helps us find ourselves, set our own goals and it teaches us to value other people.
Everybody has room to grow, Blackwattle included. Although our values and forms of demonstrating CSR are good, we have room to improve. Like any task, we would start small and work our way up. Environmental issues such as recycling are already initiative throughout NSW and all schools will be under the effects of any changes made. Higher forms of helping the community such as more volunteer work should be incorporated. Programs for the benefit of disabled students have already started to blossom and there are plans for programs similar to these to expand through out the campus. Nothing is guaranteed but the future will bring answers and revelations for the benefit of everyone.
“Greatness, acceptance and responsibility of any sort comes in many forms, in any individual, in any year, in any school”, if this saying actually existed and was well known, you could be sure that Blackwattle Bay Campus would live out that saying as if there was no tomorrow.