Taroona High Animal Cruelty-Free DayBy Grade 8 students Louisa Wright, Elise Patmore, Grace Wikstrom, Merran Cracknell, Abbey Dryden, Josh Goodsell, Dom Chiavassa and Ali Sulieman The Grade 8 ruMAD? Group organised an Animal Cruelty-Free Awareness Day on Thursday the 13th of July. We had Grade 7 and Grade 8 assemblies with animals and guest speakers. All the guests talked about animal cruelty, and showed us a video and images of animals that had been treated badly. Emma Haswell from Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania came along and talked about the horrid conditions pigs are kept in. She also brought along the pig from the forthcoming movie, ‘Charlottes Web’. Anne Boxhall from the Hobart Cat Centre and the Hobart Dogs’ Home brought along two puppies. She held a competition to name the puppies and the two selected were Mischa and Gertie. Prizes were awarded to Izzie Anderson [7O] and Chloe O’Rourke [9R]. Suzy Manigan from the Tasmanian Conservation Trust presented a PowerPoint presentation about cruelty to Native animals. Julie Williamson from the RSPCA also showed a PowerPoint presentation about what the RSPCA does to help animals and she also showed the effects that battery farming has on chickens. She also brought along a gorgeous goat. The Taroona High students did a great job of welcoming these guests to our school community and now they have a better awareness of animal cruelty and why it should be stopped. We held a ‘Cruelty Free’ Barbecue with vegetarian foods such as, vegie burgers, spring rolls, pasties, samosas, as well as frogs in ponds and drinks. The barbecue was very successful and by the end of the day everything was sold out. A number of competitions were run on the day. Yannick Van Bakel [8A] made the closest guess of the number of dog biscuits in a jar. The spectators donated money to see our teachers, Mr Roebuck and Mr Morrison, eat dog biscuits! After the event we found out they were chocolate. No wonder they were enjoying them! Some students entered the Pet Quiz and the Pet Look Alike Contest. Thank you to everyone who helped us make this day happen, and thanks to Phil Butler who cooked the vegie burgers on the day as we were too busy! We appreciated the help with the face painting from Stasia Wylie [8B], Grace Halpin-Clarkson [8B] and Giorgia Kerr [8Y]. We raised a total of $192.00 which will go to the Cat Centre and Dogs’ Home to buy food. At the moment we are organising for the group to visit these facilities to work for a day. Taroona MAD ProjectBy Helen Hortle Eighteen Grade 8 students worked on this event for about eight weeks as part of their Personal Futures program. The group started by watching the video "Free the Children" to see how another person their age had made a big difference: what inspired him and how he did it. They then brainstormed the things that were most important to them and voted on a list of 20 to find the top three which were: the environment, health and respect. Using these three areas of concern the class worked in groups and then came together to create a mission statement that summarised their vision for a perfect world: Our
big
possibility is a world where everyone treasures, respects, and works
together to protect other people and the environment so that all
people, plants and animals are healthy and
happy.” The next step required the difficult group choice of one thing they would like to do to make their community more like their vision. An overwhelming majority were able to convice the others to do something about cruelty to animals. Given the limited time available it was decided that the biggest difference they could make would be to alert the school community to all the ways in which animals are needlessly harmed. They hoped that from this, people might change their behaviour to make the world a better place for animals. |        |