Student Voice and Leadership
Peer Support Program
The Peer Support Program has concluded for the year in week 7 of this term.
Last term, Year 10 mentors began working with a group of Year 7 students. The mentors have been building connections, teaching our mentees about resilience and growth mindset, and providing support to their Year 7 mentees.
Upon completing this program, 80% of the Year 7 mentees surveyed stated that they understood resilience better, and 60% responded that they feel like they know who to go to when they need support with a problem at school.
Both the mentors and the mentees reflected that getting to work with each other was the highlight of the program, and the Year 10 mentors had noticed a lot of growth in their mentees!
Congratulations to the Year 7 mentees for showing our STARR values throughout the Peer Mentor Program, and to the Year 10 mentors for the care and commitment you have shown towards your mentees!
As we get towards the end of the year, there will be an opportunity for our current Year 9 students who are interested in building their leadership skills and helping to build connections within our MSC community to complete a Peer Support Leader training day with Ms Stone.
Keep an eye out on Compass for announcements about the peer leader training in Term 4!
Toastmasters Youth Leadership Program
Eight of MSC’s young leaders completed the Toastmasters Youth Leadership Program this term.
This was an eight-week public speaking development program, which culminated in a graduation in week 8. The participants worked on giving both planned and impromptu speeches, and developed not only their speaking skills but also their presence and confidence in themselves.
Well done to all of our young leaders – Akau, Anna-Louise, Anyang, Barsha, Eti, Nyankiir, Phoenix, and Puletasi. Your commitment to seeking opportunities for growth, and the way you have blossomed throughout the program has been truly inspirational.
Thank you as well to the wonderful facilitators from the Toastmasters Club of Melton, Ricky and Rinesh, as well as to the Toastmasters guests that attended the graduation. I’d like to extend that thank you to the families and teachers that supported our young leaders’ participation in the program along the way as well.
VicSRC Congress
In Week 9, Senior School Captains Anyang, Phoenix and Sarah represented Melton Secondary College at the VicSRC Congress.
“Vic SRC was a great experience for the school captains this year to gain some inspiration to pass to the new 2024 school captains, as we entered a world where we could explore how powerful student voice is in the education system. Vic SRC is an organization that's run by students, for students, where we discuss and raise issues that we experience all throughout year 7-12. With the strong support from ministers of education and the education department, they have trying motivated and inspired students to take action and make change so that we can get the best benefits throughout our time as students. Congress allowed for students from many schools all over Melbourne to come together and share our ideas and issues which made it so much more realistic in what changes we need to prioritize, and from the support of so many that attended, it really helped the school captains from MSC develop ideas on how we can implement these cooperative actions into our SRC, where we hope that for the following years will help students feel more engaged and motivated to attend and help us identify issues that need to be raised within the school to help us better learn.” – Phoenix Lao.
R U OK? Day
The Junior SRC team have been hard at work preparing for R U OK? Day this term. Led by School Captain, Fasil Tesfay Adisu, a team of year 9 students have collaborated with the Wellbeing team to bring MSC students an extra-special experience in the last week of Term 3.
Our student leaders planned, led a proposal meeting and actioned their ideas for R U OK? at our school this year, which included advocating for raising donations for R U OK? and raising awareness for suicide prevention and mental health by running a ‘wear something yellow’ day on the last day of term.
They also created and ran a scavenger hunt for students during break times on Tuesday, where students had to find the different locations of the R U OK? smiles around the school.
Thank you to our amazing wellbeing team for your support and collaboration, and well done to Fasil, Barsha, Printhika, Mason, Anna-Louise and Josh B for all of your hard work and planning to create an exciting event for our school that raises awareness around such an important topic!