Students Make Green Leap With Frog Bog

The Age

Monday November 17, 2008

Ben Haywood

WHEN Mount Evelyn Christian School won funding to restore a frog habitat on the edge of its property this year, it was not just an opportunity to make a lasting improvement to the local environment. For the nine Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning students who worked on the "frog bog" - as the site is now known - it was a reason to feel proud. The pond and 60-metre boardwalk and viewing platform took the students five months to develop and was one of three environmental initiatives in Victorian schools funded by prizemoney from The Age Earth Hour: Generation Green competition. the Mount Evelyn school won the $5000 second prize. The project was the idea of VCE co-ordinator Roger Fernando. It restores a patch of land that was once the site of a creek that drained into Olinda Creek. It was filled in and replaced with a pipeline before the construction of the senior school buildings in 1979, destroying the wet forest habitat. "I recognised that we needed to develop a habitat for the creatures that lost theirs with the loss of the creek," Mr Fernando says. "I realised it would be really good if we could do something and involve our VCAL program." VCAL is a hands-on option for years 11 and 12 students, providing work-related experience. With the help of their teacher, Andrew Schmidt, the VCAL students were involved in every part of the process, from designing the boardwalk based on their field research to digging the pond. Students converted the school car park into a water catchment, with run-off piped through a bio-filter to the pond. "That's worked pretty well. There are some teething problems - an air lock is forming in the flexible pipe - but that is a research thing that the VCAL students can now explore. They need to speak to some plumbers and work it out," MrSchmidt says. For the VCAL students (who spend one day a week in the workplace) the project has been enriching. "As the frog bog project has been going, the students have shown great initiative and leadership," Mr Fernando says. The bog was opened late last month. Though it will take time for plant life to build up and frogs to move in, it is already a hit with students. "It has created a place of reflection for the students," MrFernando says."If they're having a tough day, kids are just going and sitting there and looking at the water." The site has also proved a source of inspiration for art and literature students, and middle-years science students are doing a statistical study of the bog's habitation. -- BEN HAYWOOD

© 2008 The Age

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