Report of the Youth Leadership Graduation 2023

Congratulations to all the year five and six students who graduated from the Advanced Presentation Skills Youth Leadership Course.  All students impressed their teachers and families with a very high standard of Prepared Speeches, Off the Cuff Speeches and evaluations.  The Audio Visual presentations were also of a very high standard and perfectly timed.

All students were awarded certificates of completion and trophies were awarded to:

Joshua’s speech was called “Fast Fashion” describing how many people buy clothing and only wear it a few times before it ends up in landfill.  Patrick also had a very clever speech called “A newly Found Passion”, he built up the anticipation in his speech before we found out his passion – golf.

All 16 speeches were of an extremely high standard and the judges had great difficulty in making their final decisions.  So many students memorized their speeches and incorporated eye contact, gestures and vocal variety.

Special thanks to both the Master of Ceremonies Gui Dos Reis Tavares and Chiara McMullin for their fine efforts, and to the Off the Cuff Presenters, Siena-Rose Christian and Sierra Story for their excellent work.  Lois Chieng played beautiful piano pieces for 5/6A and Raphael Speekman had us bopping in our chairs with his piano piece which was the theme song from The Simpsons.  These certainly added to the mood of the meetings.  We also had joke tellers, Jake, Benedict, Alex and Lucas who certainly got the audience laughing.

A very big thank you to Miss Walsh, Miss Louise, Mrs Cerrina and Mrs Evans who encouraged and supported the students' work and helped make the program a success.  The graduation reflected the hard work and growth over the eight week period, with confident, passionate speeches and also great use of humour.  Congratulations to all of our student’s brave efforts in controlling their nervousness, giving generously of themselves and demonstrating their resilience and persistence.

Mr McKenna and two audience members (Mr Davey and Mrs Ogilvy) responded to “Off the Cuff” questions.  We thank you for your participation and we were so glad that many parents were able to attend to witness the students in action.

The topics for the “Speaking with Passion” presentations were mature and well chosen, including subjects such as sustainability, gender equality and the upcoming referendum for “The Voice” and closing the Gap of the inequalities for the indigenous population.

In finishing I would just like to thank all the families for their support of their students, the school and this program.  I hope that this training stands all students in good stead for their future.

Sandra de Geest

Advanced Presentation Skills