The city is our classroom

Year 9 City School

This semester 6 classes of Year 9 students have been studying English through the City School program, conducting an extended in-depth investigation of our own design.  Last week was the City Experience component of the program. For three days we travelled to the city to collect data for the certain topics we are investigating. We had to survey the public and interview an expert on our specific topic, along with other workshops which we participated in.

For the first workshop my class and I went to SYN; a radio station run by people under 25 which talks about a huge variety of different topics. Each group got a 3-4 minute segment of a whole class radio show about each of the groups' individual topics. We talked about Melbourne’s most sustainable buildings as that related to our topic.

On the second day we went to the Big Issue to talk about homelessness and what the Big Issue does for people in need. We learnt about how they help people and the way they run it. We talked to an ex-homeless man called Steve and listened to his very emotional story about his journey and how the Big Issue helped him.

The rest of the time we spent surveying the public about our topic. My group and I were extremely lucky in being able to interview the Dean of Melbourne University’s Design Hub. Overall the experience was extremely fun and challenged us all out of our comfort zone.

Mina Lo Presti

9A

We look forward to the teams presenting their findings on June 21.