Engaging with our world, protecting our environment

Science is part of our daily lives, from cooking, gardening, recycling, to understanding the weather. Being science literate is a necessity for our students as it allows them to understand the world in which they live and how it works. Through science we start to understand the role that humans play in the environment. By teaching the students to question, research and experiment we give them the skills and confidence that they can help solve local and world problems. As a green school we have a commitment to a science teaching approach that is practical and relevant to the students’ current and future lives.

Kitchen Garden - STA students work together to ensure that our school garden thrives. The students learn valuable lessons in persistence and patience as they work hard each day and wait for crops and plants to grow. Produce grown in the STA gardens is used in the cooking of the students’ lunches. The students observe and record data to help them understand how the weather, time of year and other factors affect plant growth.

Waste Management - While many people here are resourceful and reuse plastic bottles and paper, there is no waste management system in Tanzania which means that all garbage ends up at burned in a dump or in our waterways. STA students participate and help organise clean up days in the local community, actively reuse items and in January will partner with the government on a community wide environmental awareness and beach clean up day.

Water -  At home, most of our students do not have clean drinking water and water-borne illness is still a huge problem in Tanzania. At STA we filter all our drinking water and reinforce safe water collection practices at home.

Biogas - Almost all of the food cooked at STA, is done so by biogas. Biogas is simple free cooking gas made from the methane of our 18 cows in a 50 cubic meter underground tank. It gets piped to our kitchen where it runs a stove and soon, an oven. Most cooking in Tanzania relies on charcoal which decimates our forests. Biogas is 100% renewable energy.

 Whether a student goes on to University or stops his/her education at Standard 7, our aim is that they can be self-reliant and know the importance of a balanced diet in disease prevention. STA students will know native plants and how they are beneficial to health. According to the Agricultural Council of Tanzania, there needs to be a ‘green revolution’ in this country. STA wants to be an integral part of this reform.