“What if we encouraged our students to reimagine their school toilets?” – Dannielle Miller, CEO, Enlighten Education.

Whilst St Catherine’s students annually report a very high level of ‘feeling safe’ on the Australian Resilient Youth Survey, we are always on the lookout for ways to improve. As part of our responsibility to provide students with a safe and secure environment at school, the Student Wellbeing Committee seeks student input and feedback. In Semester 2, we created a Safety Survey to ascertain which areas of the School students feel most comfortable and secure in, asking them to rate each area. The findings were overwhelmingly positive with almost all students surveyed reporting that they feel very safe everywhere in the School, however, four per cent of students nominated the School toilets as a place they feel less comfortable in.

In response to this feedback, and inspired by Enlighten Education’s ‘School Toilet Project’, the process of upgrading the Clock Tower toilets in the Year 7 area began. Author and Enlighten CEO Dannielle Miller’s research into United Kingdom and Australian schools revealed that students often report that school toilets feel unsafe or unwelcoming. She asserts, “Few school administrations make the connection between clean, pleasant and safe toilet facilities and children’s short and long term physical and mental health and learning outcomes.” Miller poses the question, “What if we encouraged our students to reimagine their school toilets?” Our Student Executive team rose to this challenge and did just that.

The redesigned Year 7 bathroom in the Clock Tower.

The Year 12 Student Executive meets regularly to discuss proposed initiatives to enhance students’ sense of belonging and enjoyment of school. Armed with the brief to design a positive and uplifting Clock Tower bathroom makeover, the Executive, comprised of School Co-Captains Kavina Kalaichelvam and Georgina Cottrill, and executive members Clementine Aston, Annelise Cody, Hope Kudelka and Emily Sutherland, began the project. The ideas flowed easily; they could all remember what they would have loved as a Year 7 student: flowers, butterflies, blue skies; a natural scene to overcome the dull sterility a bathroom can have. Having decided on a nature theme to offer a welcoming sense of serenity and warmth, they set about researching bathroom fittings, lighting and commercial grade wallpaper. The vanity benches would be replaced with single basins, wooden framed round mirrors to suit the nature theme, eco-friendly hand-dryers to reduce waste, pendant lights to soften the fluorescents, clipboards behind each stall door to display positive messages and a poster with rotating positive messages in the entrance. They could not wait to see how the Year 7 cohort would respond.

The Student Executive decided on a nature theme to offer a welcoming sense of serenity and warmth in the bathroom.

Once the project was completed, with the assistance of our supportive and skilled Maintenance team, the time came to unveil the long held secret. The reopening of the bathroom was met with screams of delight, excitement and overwhelming gratitude from the Year 7 students. Students from every year level have loved the new look as well. The Head of Year 7, Ms Kanako Yokouchi, said she had never seen so much foot traffic to the Clock Tower in one day!

The Year 7 cohort at the unveiling of their redesigned bathroom.

The 2019 Student Executive have left behind an important legacy as agents of change in the School community, having applied their combined efforts to collaborate, research, plan, design, budget and bring their ideas to fruition – all important skills that they will utilise as future change makers. Most importantly, however, creating a positive space to make someone feel safer, happier and just a little bit brighter cannot be underestimated. The light, colour and fun of the bathrooms cannot help but lift everyone’s spirits and will no doubt delight many Year 7 cohorts for years to come as they begin their Secondary School journey in the Clock Tower.

The 2019 Student Executive have created a positive space for many future Year 7 cohorts.