Albion Primary school teacher Marita Ryan took home the sustainability teacher of the year award (primary) at the 2025 ResourceSmart Schools awards ceremony on Thursday, June 5.
Ms Ryan, a PE teacher at the school, was recognised for her initiatives that encourage students to learn about environmental sustainability through hands-on lessons.
“Everyone’s behind it, everyone loves it,” she said.
“[The students] do a lot of day-to-day jobs. They train each other now. That’s when you know it’s been embedded.
“I was just blown away by what the children were saying.”
Her passion for the environment started in childhood.
“I grew up in a small country town up in the Mallee. The initiatives we’re doing now are what I was doing in primary school … it’s the way I was brought up,” she said.
Ms Ryan guides students through a range of activities such as gardening, water testing, waste management and biodiversity monitoring.
“We’ve got a bee hotel, chicken coop, compost bins, worm bins. We put a lot of native and veggie gardens in,” she said.
Albion Primary School joined ResourceSmart Schools six years ago after Ms Ryan and her colleagues heard about the program at a professional development event.
“After contributing to the professional development and listening to what we had to do, we were convinced to sign the school up,” she said.
ResourceSmart Schools, a free state government program, grades participating schools on their sustainability initiatives using a five-star system.
“It took us five years to get the five stars,” Ms Ryan said.
