Home Educational insightsRound Square Student Committee Activities during Pandemic 2020

Round Square Student Committee Activities during Pandemic 2020

Posted: 23 September 2020

IDEALS

Discoveries

Age Range

Secondary

Lead School

St Philips College

Collaboration Partners

ICS Zurich

Overview

The St Philips Round Square student committee meet every Friday morning and continued to do so through the pandemic. They came together to plan, develop, and promote Round Square, as has historically been the case at the College. The students realised that it was important to continue to connect, although floundering a little to begin with due to the changed learning environment associated with COVID-19. It was recognised that there was a need for the Committee to continue to exercise Leadership to the school community.

Plan

The students brought computers to the committee meetings to familiarize themselves with the Round Square Website and terminology showing their Inquisitiveness, problem solving. During the first semester of 2020, the committee has been successful in looking for different ways to connect internationally and to increase the understanding of the Discovery Framework at St Philips to both students and faculty. Discussion at meetings revolved around how best to present the Round Square “projects” to the School without physical assemblies (on-line only available initially) their Communication, problem-solving and tenacity shone through. It wasn’t necessarily easy to function under the changed learning conditions, but the students have had some great results and they can be proud that they have been really productive using the IDEALS challenges.

Activity

Students decided that each of the Pillar Captains would choose an activity, generated by Round Square ideas which they would then present to the Houses (6 of them) for dissemination to the Tutor Groups (30).

The first activity was presented by our Service Captain – Drops of Water for Random Acts of Kindness -the project was emailed out to the Heads of House who disseminated information to their Tutor Groups. The students wanted others to explore Kindness, Self-Awareness and Compassion.

The Environment Captain presented an Environment Footprint Measure – everyone had the opportunity in their Tutor Groups to work out how many worlds were required to support their lifestyles. With a focus to Sustainability, Responsibility and Inquisitiveness.

Adventure was tackled by the student committee organising a Tik Tok video for learning how to do a dance – this started with Committee and then each Tutor Group was taught the moves. Allowing the houses to show thier teamwork, courage, communication. The committee talked about and supplied some Aussie Recipes for “the Cook Book” Once again focusing on the discoveries Communication, Diversity, Teamwork.

The Democracy Captain presented the idea of good news stories coming out of the COVID situation, or simply good things happening in the world. This got students thinking about the good, beautiful, and positive in a dark time. St Philips students then share their own stories and these demonstrated Teamwork, Inventiveness, Communication.

Finally for Internationalism the student committee put out a challenge to connect with other Round Square Student Committees. They created a video which was sent to other schools, resulting in a zoom connection with ICS. They established a Twitter Account to communicate with ICS students.

Challenges

The COVID 19 Pandemic prevented the usual plans for many activities traditionally held at the College, but the students didn’t let this stop them coming up with some new ideas to pursue. The students did attempt to connect with other schools, but this wasn’t always successful due to technology issues and time zone differences, however the committee will continue trying to make connections in Term Three. This has kept their discoveries of Tenacity, diversity, problem solving in the forefront of their minds. In terms of some of the activities which were taken place in school some of the Houses were better than others at participating but it was important to offer the opportunity.

Impact

All of these small elements helped to keep our community connected but also explore Round Square further.

Long-term Outcomes

The students shared the following feedback for their long term outcomes:

  1. Participants and organisers were able to step out of their comfort zones and allowed everyone to think more about Round Square in broader terms.
  2. The Democracy project encouraged the school to see the “good amongst the bad”
  3. We now have a blueprint to roll out if this should happen again!
  4. All activities helped give insight to other year levels about Round Square.
  5. Inclusiveness
  6. We are currently planning a new set of activities along the same principles which will engage the committee and hopefully some enthusiastic students in Tutor Groups.
  7. We would certainly use the previous activities at another time with different groups.

Advice

Author: Sarah Pollitt, Round Square Representative, St. Phillips College 

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