Year 10 Leadership Day at St Kilda Football Club

On Wednesday the 3rd of August 2022, twenty-one Year 10 students travelled by bus to the St Kilda Football Training Center. When we arrived we went to the conference room where we met Hannah Priest, the St Kilda AFLW Captain and the leader of education at the football club. She introduced herself to the students and discussed her role in the St Kilda team. Hannah had the entire Year 10 group including Mr. Wright and Garry, all close our eyes, take deep breaths and complete a mindfulness activity to get us prepared for the lesson and ready to learn.

She then presented the presentation she had created and spoke about different ways to be a leader, how working as a team is beneficial and one of the key qualities in a good leader is confidence. She discussed many ways that confidence can be displayed; to speak up, not be afraid to have a go, being a part of the team and working with them instead of against them. Hannah also gave examples of how confidence has been strongly beneficial to her team and how she captains the team. She also taught us that it's okay to be afraid to do those things but pushing yourself to do them whilst being afraid, put on a brave face and just give it a go.

Hannah then got all of the students and two teachers to go outside and watch the Footy boys training and got us to look out for 5 key things that we could see them using their confidence in person. After watching them train, everyone went back inside and shared what they found. Then we joined in doing some team building activities. We did charades for movies and also used our skills to team our small group of 3 on how to make something out of paper without being able to see them or them see us. These activities were all based upon improving our communication skills.

At the end of our session Hannah gave all of us a tour of the facility and wellness centre. She explained what happens in each area and how the rehabilitation area works and how it is open for the public. We were all very thankful for the session that Hannah presented to us and we learnt some valuable lessons on confidence and communication.

Mikayla Miller