MYSELF Program
My Duke of Edinburgh
As part of the Duke of Edinburgh MYSELF program, participants must complete as one of the four components to the Award, a Service unit. Students have been completing this Service during class time on a Wednesday and here are some reports from each group.
Warren Halliday
PE, Health & Mathematics Teacher
Beverley Hills Primary School
Our group of six chose to volunteer at Beverley Hills Primary School. For the past few weeks, we’ve worked individually with grade 1’s and 2’s every Wednesday for an hour and 40 minutes. This experience has taught us much in a short period of time, where we’ve been able to better our communication skills especially with children, which challenges us in a positive way because we’ve had to vary our ways of communication, as all students have different learning styles and capabilities.
We’ve also had the chance to experience the reciprocal end of learning, where instead of being the student, we are able to have insight on what being a teacher is like. We’ve developed patience, confidence, leadership, responsibility, organisation and other skills that will all benefit us significantly throughout our future careers and personal life. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with the students and our teachers and look forward to our next excursions.
Eshana C. 9B, Serena C. 9D, Teryl H. 9A, Jenessa N. 9D, Krystel Q. 9A, and Meagan T. 9B
Heatherwood School
For our service, we are helping around and participating in a class at Heatherwood School, a school for children with disabilities. We have learnt about the flexibility of teachers around the student’s disabilities. We are also learning about how the students are taught during art and drama class. We have been allocated a year nine class to be a part of and we are learning quite a lot about their learning styles. This will benefit all of us in the future because of how we are learning to co-operate with those who may have some learning disadvantages because of their disabilities. This will also benefit us in terms of how to help people who may have disabilities.
Lily M. 9F, Jess J. 9G, Hannah W. 9A, and Victoria M. 9C
Mercy Aged Care Centre
“We were showing her some family photos and she LOVED them” – George said during the time the photo was taken. “They are keeping us busy, but we enjoy it.”
The boys had their day full of activities from Entertainment for the elderly like Dictionary words, a guessing game where the elderly sit around in chairs in a semi-circle and try to guess the word’s meaning. They moved on to clean the bird cages, communicate and talk privately with elderly residents in the homes, and acted as dining staff, cleaning up dishes.
When asked what they hoped to learn and what they already had learnt, they responded by saying that they were ultimately looking to build themselves experience with working in an unfamiliar environment, as well as heightening their social skills. This is to help them get their jobs in the future. They claimed that they don’t want to have any idea of what they’re doing when they actually do get their jobs. It also pleases the employer higher in these students. As a side effect, they did mention that they want to learn more about the broader community. A certainly impressive and important part of growing up.
Anastasi R. 9G, Steven K. 9I, and George G. 9C