My name is Ashley and I attend Wantirna College,
I came to Snowy River because I wanted to become a better leader, learn new things, make new friends, I thought it would be a great experience and it might look good on my resume. SSL stands for School for Student Leadership. Forty-four kids from around the state have come to 1 of 3 campuses to live with each other and coexist in one area. We are all together and learning at the same time all about different things such as our Beliefs and Values, how we think and learn and we also work on our Community Learning Project. We do a lot of outdoor activities such as Expos where we go out for a 3 day hike, Bridge Building, Surfing and Canoeing. A lot of these activities are supposed to help us build our leadership skills and get to know our groups.

My highlights so far would be Surfing and our Expo. Surfing was so much fun and it was my first time. Surprisingly I learnt pretty fast and stood up when catching a wave a few times. With our Expo I found it very difficult to walk with the heavy packs. We had to carry all our clothes, sleeping bags, tents and all our food. The hardest part was having to walk along the beach to get to each campsite with the bag. Over the three days I was having trouble with the roles I was given as they included speaking up above everyone and talking control. This was one of my goals I had to work on but I just found it hard to do. In the end I eventually achieved getting to the end but I was in so much pain from walking so far. Some of the classes we have had have been really fun such as Thinking and Learning where we learnt about our brain and which side is the most dominant. It was good to know this and I can now learn from this but also improve on some of the other parts of my brain.

Some of the other classes we have had have been quite inspirational as we have had guest speakers to come and speak to us about being a leader and achieving goals that they have set. Guest speakers such as Beau Vernon who became a paraplegic after an accident while playing footy. His goal was to be able to do move again so he went into a rehabilitation center where they helped him get some movement back into his body but he has been paralyzed from the torso down and has only movement in his fingers.

Passport is one of the things we do throughout the term here at Snowy River Campus. We put together a learning document where we have to answer questions about our goals and who we were before coming to the Snowy River Campus. When passport is finished we will have a whole document on our time here at Snowy to show our learning progress.

Community Learning Project (CLP)

Our CLP, Community Learning Project, is a project that will help our community back at home. Our CLP is making the transition for year 6’s into year 7 easier. We are putting together a pack for students with information on where to go if they need to talk to someone or if they notice a friend needs help. We are focusing more on the mental health side of things. We hope that by making these packs and going around talking to the students that we can put the pressure and stress down. We want to try and reduce anxiety and let them know that they a not alone. Our name for this project is S.O.S, Support Over Secrecy.