During this month´s assemblies in Junior and Senior School, Ms Smith shared the sad news regarding the death of His Royal Highness, Prince Philip. She spoke a little bit about his life and told the pupils about the legacy he leaves behind. He set up the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the 1950s because he believed passionately about encouraging young people to take themselves out of their comfort zones in order for them to realise that they can achieve anything when they put their minds to it. The awards allow young people to set themselves challenges, from learning a new skill to volunteering to help others, as well as practising sport. Indeed, this month´s Action for Happiness calendar starts off by challenging us to being more active in April:
We had plenty to celebrate this month. Our class of the month winners are 3º EPO A, 5º EPO A and 3º ESO A who will have their celebratory breakfasts of Cola Cao and cake in the dining room this week.
Ms Smith also reminded students about this month and next month´s Social Responsibility campaigns. This month, Don Jaime launched the canned goods campaign which runs until 7th May. Tinned products will be given to Madre Coraje who will send them to Mozambique and perishable goods will be given to the Convento del Espíritu Santo, who will distribute them amongst the most needy in El Puerto. Next month, we are encouraging pupils to walk, run, cycle or swim and count up the kilometres covered. They will seek sponsorship per kilometre during the whole of the month of May and all money raised will be divided equally between the two charities put forward by our LMR Community Award winners, Fundación Aladina, who support children with cancer, and Asociación Andaluza de Cooperación Sanitaria, who work to help improve health conditions in some African countries.
Ms Smith was also joined by Mr Olías and Coral, Lucía and Anna, representatives from our Environment Committee (Aula de Sostenibilidad), to talk about our commitment as a community to this year´s Environmental LitterLess Campaign. As a school, we are committed to reducing the amount of waste we produce and our interactive assembly saw pupils answering the following three questions:
- How does a plastic bottle take to decompose?
- How many years has plastic been in existence for?
- What can you do to reduce plastic waste that ends up in our seas?
Our ultimate goal is to become a plastic bottle free school and our Environment Committee representatives encouraged the pupils to bring in a reusable water bottle. They reminded them that we have these available in our school shop and there are ten designs to choose from, two corporate designs and two for each of the Houses. We all need to do our bit to help reduce plastic waste in our world.
