Being in school is a vital part of a child’s growth. This is a place where we learn a number of things such as various subjects, friendship, camaraderie, among many other things.
However, many argue that some important “life skills” must be added to the lesson plan as well, since these skills are what adults essentially need.
Sure, this can easily be learned online thanks to several video tutorials on YouTube, but an all-girl school in Sydney. Australia decided to take one step ahead by teaching teenage girls the importance of basic car maintenance.
In a recently shared post on Facebook, the Stella Maris College reached out to longterm ‘car educators’ Galmatic in order to teach the Year 11 students a number of essential DIY car skills, such as checking tire pressure, oil levels, what do in a car crash, and of course, how to change a tire.
As it turns out, the all-female team has been teaching around 100,000 teenagers in Sydney every year as they claim that they specialize in helping Australian women and teenagers feel more confident and comfortable behind the wheel.
Galmatic does this by conducting hands-on car maintenance workshops, school incursions, and online courses. They assure their clients that they don’t need prior skills or knowledge in order to learn in a friendly and non-threatening environment.
“Ultimately they are driving very big vehicles which can be very expensive if not looked after properly,” Eleni Mitakos, the owner of Galmatic said. “We can’t stress enough to all our students you should never ignore a problem with your car, you need to address it for your own safety.”
The school’s vice-principal, Amy Smith, states that this has been a very positive experience for these girls. The school faculty see this as highly beneficial to the students not just because they learned a new skill, but they’ve also become more independent and confident about themselves.
She also added:
“All the teaching staff and our principal Elizabeth Carnegie felt a workshop like this would be beneficial for many reasons, mainly skills the girls need to learn before they leave school. It was also important to show the girls that they have the capabilities to handle situations themselves once they are on the road, rather than rely on someone else.”
The school set up an incursion and split the 40 students into 3 different groups. Overall, the activity received positive responses from everyone in the school faculty, from the students, down to the people online who shared their admiration for the gender-bender activity.
Some of the comments were:
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
