Melissa Bosano
Subject Leader for English.
Westside School
The English department at Westside School cele-
brates World Book Day every year. We usually have
a theme as a guideline for students to follow when
dressing up as literary characters, and there are pri-
zes for the best costumes and group efforts. This year,
we decided to go with an upcycling theme and repur-
posed many old books that had been in storage for
years (some for decades!) in our storerooms to make
new items that will be used to decorate the English
area in the new school building in September.
Whilst packing and sorting through the many
textbooks in storage, teachers at Westside realised
that, although these books were no longer fit for
use in lessons, it was unthinkable to see many old
classics binned! There were storerooms full of lite-
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rary works of art ranging from Shakespearean plays,
books of poetry, classics such as Dumas’ “The Three
Musketeers” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Go-
dot”. Quite apart from our reluctance to throw away
any work of literature, it was felt that in these times
of climate change and ecological crisis, it would be
irresponsible to miss an opportunity to pass on an
important message to students: the message that
‘old’ does not necessarily mean ‘useless’.
With a little inspiration from Pinterest, some
imagination and creativity and a lot of planning and
preparatory work by teachers and students alike,
the World Book Day upcycling efforts were a suc-
cess. The activities carried out on the day ensured
that students took part in creating some beautiful
OTWO 02 / SEPTEMBER 2019
OTWO 02 / SEPTEMBER 2019
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