Hi, my name is Erinn Harnden and my home school is Wonthaggi Secondary College. It’s split into two campuses with around 1200 students in total. I attend the Dudley Campus, for students between Year 7 – Year 9. It’s the only public school in the immediate area and it gets its students from about nine primary schools in the Bass Coast Shire. As such, 60% of the school population travel to school by bus. It’s a pretty nice school and most of the teachers are really funny and caring. The students there are generally welcoming and kind. There are six students, including myself, from WSC attending the School for Student Leadership at the Snowy River Campus. Everyone is really nice and we are all trying our hardest to contribute to our Community Learning Project.

The School for Student Leadership is an amazing opportunity for Year 9 students such as myself to become the leaders they want to be and to learn life skills. We learn a lot about team work and social relations and how to better operate as a contributing member of society. We do this through outdoor activities, such as hiking, bridge-building and surfing, but also through class-based activities. Everything we learn here is so much fun and I’m still struggling to believe that this is even real. Whilst we are here, everyone is required to take part in a Community Learning Project. This project can be anything from fundraising for an emergency service to getting a garden bed for a local school. The purpose of doing this is to give us a chance to take what we’ve learnt from Snowy and bring it back to our community at home.

Community Learning Project (CLP)

Our CLP is called Reducing Environmental Impact (REI).
Our vision is for a community where people care for the environment and work to keep it clean, through education and action, so that it can be enjoyed for generations to come. As a part of our CLP we have created a motto, which is: ‘Our future, clean future.’ Our CLP is aimed at reducing the litter that scatters the coast in our area. We have two main stages and a possible third that are designed to help us achieve this. Our first stage is all about education. We plan to visit a local primary school and teach them about pollution in a fun and interactive way. Our second stage is organizing a local rubbish pick-up day at one of our local beaches. We will advertise this in the local paper, in school newsletters and with flyers. Depending on the success of this, we may have a third stage. Our third stage involves approaching our local shire/council with a proposal asking for there to be more bins on local beaches. If necessary, we can help fundraise for this to happen. Everyone in our team is really excited and passionate about our CLP and I can’t wait for it to actually begin.

One of my highlights of my time here so far has definitely been getting to know everyone else at the Campus. There are so many funny, like-minded people here, it’s incredible! Another highlight from my time here has definitely been surfing. It’s so much fun to get out and about in the coastal environment around here. It’s a really beautiful place and I’m so glad I get to experience.

Hello my name is Jack Gillies. I go to Wheelers Hill Secondary College and for the past four weeks I have been taking part in a 10-week program at the School for Student Leadership, with two other students from my school; Caitlin and Jasmine.

Community Learning Project (CLP)

The title for Our Project is called 'Creating awareness about domestic violence’
. The focus for our Community Learning Project is to raise money and awareness about domestic violence in our local community. While we are here we will plan an event that will help our community, so we came up with the idea of holding a trivia night to raise funds and awareness about domestic violence, with all funds raised going to the Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia. This event will be held in our school library at 6:00 till 8:30 in either late July or early August.

Our vision for our CLP is to create a community where people are safe and secure in their homes. Our motto is “Keep our Community Safe”.

Montaser Rahama:

The reason why I wanted to come to the Snowy River Campus is because I wanted to be a better leader for myself and others and also to be a better person, son, brother and nephew for my family because I am pretty immature times. I can give my family mainly my mother some pretty bad days so I want to be better than that so I can be a better person and relative and a better friend.

The Snowy River Campus is one big building with a kitchen. There is a boys wing for boys with rooms and toilets and a girls wing with rooms and toilets. In both wings there are two washing machines and a dryer. Out back is a backyard with a clothes line. The site of the school is smaller than a normal school but compared to the pictures on the school website it looks bigger. For free time here we play a lot of table tennis and I mean a lot! I think table tennis is my new favourite game. I might need to ask my mum to get rid of my basketball hoops and switch it with a table tennis table. The teachers here are really nice and they are willing to help anyone to achieve their goals.

My highlight since I have been here would be meeting new friends and fitting in. In my mind before I came here I thought I would not fit in at this school and would have no friends. I thought it was going to be really nerve racking but I made friends really easily. I didn’t really need to do anything. I just let my dreadlocks do the talking because I had two other guys who also had dreadlocks and we were like the three musketeers but with dreadlocks and no swords or moustaches.

Samantha Simpson

Why I came to the Snowy River Campus (SRC) is because I want to be a better leader and I thought it would be a good experience to have. I want to learn more about being a leader. This is also going to make me a better person and people can look up too.

Whilst I have been here at SRC I have been living in a community with 43 other students. There are duties that happen every day. Living in an all girls wing with a room mate is a good experience. Through living in a community I have learnt the importance of having different personalities and I have learnt how to work with other people and how to share two washing machines with 24 other girls. I have been on my first Expo, which was very hard because I had to carry a 10-15kg bag and had to walk on sand for two days in a row. The Expo was three days long and through this experience I have learnt to push myself when things are getting hard.

My highlights since I have been here would be meeting new people, a new environment that I have fitted into well. There are also lots of fun activates to do every day.

Community Learning Project (CLP)

Our Community Learning Project (CLP)
For our Community Learning Project (CLP) we plan to go into Trafalgar High School to work with young people from grades three and four. We aim to teach the young people about the importance of being fit and healthy. We see this generation not really knowing how to be fit and healthy, so if we teach them about it they will teach the next generation. We hope that this will see an improvement in Trafalgar’s community’s health and happiness. We are going to play some games with fruit and vegetables as in Fruit Salad and flash cards. Our motto is ‘Be Healthy, Be Active’.

Community Learning Project (CLP)

For the past few weeks, students from Mount Waverley Secondary College have created a Community Learning Project (CLP) here at the Snowy River Campus. The project we are doing is called the H.O.S.T. Program (Helping Overall School Transitions) and our aim is to begin ‘strengthening school support’ between the campus’ in our school, as well as surrounding primary schools.

Our team includes: Laura Chauca Diaz, Joshua Griffiths-Hunt, Rhys Incoll, Jessalyn Lim and Jack Sephton. Our vision is for a community where the students, teachers and parents from Mount Waverley Secondary College and surrounding primary schools are connected and are able to communicate between each other to form relationships freely and easily.

We hope to strengthen the bond between our school’s campus’ by getting students to move between the different sites. We will get students from the senior site to play games with the students of the junior school, and have a small information day where we will get them to familiarise themselves with the senior site map. We will also tell them any differences between the junior and senior classes and the overall school days. Senior students will also participate in the junior campus’ classes, and help them with their work during the lesson, to aid them in their learning. All of these activities will get the students to form relationships with the older students from our senior site – who they will see in future years.

We will also work with the year eight leaders and go to different local primary schools to participate in various activities with the students. We will have a small ‘interview’ to answer any questions, and ease any worries, they may have about high school, as well as run a high school simulation day to get the students comfortable with the idea of moving up to secondary.