SCHOOL FOR STUDENT LEADERSHIP
About the School
School for Student Leadership is a Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) initiative offering a unique residential education experience for Year 9 students. The curriculum focuses on personal development and team learning projects sourced from students' home regions.
There are three campuses in iconic locations across Victoria. The Alpine School Campus is located at Dinner Plain in the Victorian Alps. Snowy River Campus is near the mouth of the Snowy River at Marlo in east Gippsland. The third site is adjacent to Mount Noorat near Camperdown in Victoria’s Western District, and is called Gnurad-Gundidj.
This year, 3 LHS Year 9 students attended the School for Student Leadership at Gnurad-Gundidj Campus; Slater Brewer, Cody Huxley and Annie Moore.
Slater Brewer has written the following piece about his experience at Gnurad-Gundidj.
Gnurad-Gundidj Campus
During Term 1 this year, I attended the School for Student Leadership, a program spread across 4 campuses each in different areas of Victoria.
I got into the program after applying to the Liaison teacher of our school. After being selected for the program, we were given a list of things we would need for the camp such as clothing, cutlery and other camping items, as well as the date for when we would have a Webex with the campus we were going to for more information. The Webex was very helpful as it answered a lot of questions I would have figured out otherwise.
The campus was a building with a big dining hall area, which doubled as a classroom for when everyone was having classes together, as well as two identical wings that had bedrooms, bathrooms and a laundry area where you would wash your clothes. There was a grass area outside and a dirt road where you could ride bikes on the campus. Beyond this area there was a large area of land the school owned simply known as “Zone 3”, the name coming from the fact the building itself was Zone 1, and Zone 2 being the dirt road and grass outside. Zone 3 was a very steep area with a couple of trees at the bottom, that previous students had made tree forts in.
A typical day would start at 6:30 am (provided you didn't wake up earlier) as that was when the wings opened up to the dining hall, this was for safety reasons. Breakfast was at 7 am and went for half an hour where there was a morning meeting. This would consist of two students reading the activities for that day as well as weather. After morning meetings you would have an hour and a half to do whatever you needed before class started. The classes were not typical schoolwork, it was more along the lines of empathy, resilience, learning strategies, environments and other things like those.
Morning tea would happen at 10:30 am, giving you a bit of a break from morning class and giving you some food and a cup of milo. Class then resumed at 11 am and went until midday, lunch being at 12:30 pm. Class then resumed at about 1 pm and lasted until 3:30 pm and afternoon tea was at 4:00 pm. DEARR was a reflection of the day we had which took place at 5:00 pm, dinner was at 6:00 pm, evening class ended the day at 7:30 pm.
I would recommend this experience to anyone. My my time at the SSL was one of the best and most fun parts of schooling I have ever experienced.
During this time, I did surfing, mountain biking, hiking, camping, the list goes on, but I think the most important experience was the leadership skills you gain from it. Meeting new people from other parts of Victoria was also a very good part of the experience as you got to learn about other people’s way of life, you had country kids meeting people who were 5 minutes away from the city, as well as a few schools in between.
If you get the chance to go to this camp, I would say to take it in a heartbeat.
Slater Brewer 9J