Achievements

On Monday 28th February, Emma Downward participated in the ‘Youth of the Year’ competition run by the Lions group. This was an induction by fire for Emma as we didn’t know about this competition until last week. She responded to my calls for any interested party to let me know and we went from there. 

Last Tuesday, John Lissenberg from Rotary came out to the school to talk to both us about what to expect and to help Emma with her application. Then on Thursday, Emma attended an interview where she was asked questions about her application and some interesting other questions for about 40 minutes. One was a LOCAL level question about a community issue that she cared about, the next was about a STATE level question about what she would do about drowning incidents increasing and the final question was a WORLD based one on whether we should send troops to the Ukraine. 

This process was one that would scare any adult, let alone a girl in Year 11. However, Emma is not daunted easily and she ensured that she prepared her 5 minute speech to be given whilst the rest of us [parents, fellow competitors and Rotarians] were feasting at the Buckingham International in Highett. She cut short netball practice, ignored SACs that were a few days away and focused on the evening. She knew that she also had to answer two other questions on the night and speak for two minutes. The only advice given was that she could be asked about who she would like to have at a dinner party [or similar].

The two impromptu questions on Monday night were interesting. The first one was ‘what would be the first thing you would do if you were the Prime Minister?’ Emma spoke eloquently about the gender pay gap. The next question was  misunderstood by Emma and the participant from Melbourne High. This question wanted to know where in Australia you would go if you were given a free plane ticket. Emma wanted to go to Finland [not in Australia] and the Melbourne High boy went on a political discussion….interesting but not relevant. This was a learning exercise in listening carefully to the question and no doubt this will not occur again.

Emma’s chose to speak on ‘Know your Op Shop, grow your Op Shop’ for her 5 minute prepared speech. This is a passion for her and believe me, she knows a lot about the ins and out of Op Shops and the community involvement required. She was articulate, passionate and delivered her speech well. Throughout the evening she held court at our table and spoke to the many Lions members who came up to have a chat. She won both the overall award and the public speaking award which was incredible.

Hi all,

Emma continues on her winning ways, by winning the next level of this competition today, I was not present, but her mum sent me this photo. This was a quick turnaround from the Club level win a couple of weeks ago, but Emma is always up for a challenge and just took it in her stride.

Thanks to a very busy Ms Tebbutt for giving Emma some tuition on how to use the microphone too. 

An Outstanding Achievement of Year Seven Students

Year Seven students who learn Japanese at Parkdale have been learning the first Japanese script, Hiragana, since the beginning of this year. They learn about 5 out of 46 Hiragana characters each week. Some of our hard-working Year Seven students in 7B and 7C learned the 46 Hiragana characters independently in 5-6 weeks while learning the Japanese greetings, how to introduce themselves in Japanese (about 10 lines), how to count, how to write the numbers in Japanese using Kanji. The following students have received certificates in recognition of their excellent achievements in learning the Hiragana script independently in a short time. 

Hudson Barnes

Jessica Bell

Dean Forshner

Joshua Johnson-McAllister

Stacey Krikis

Christopher Lococo

Benjamin Lorencak

Charli Marsh-Bibb

Dakota Phillips 

Daria Pogromskaya

Liam Polites

Yanki Uzun

Rhys Warren-Smith

Selena Williams

Thomas Yoon

Yanki Uzun of 7C learned the second script, Katakana independently in 1-2 weeks. Katakana script is taught in Year Eight. It is an amazing effort to learn the Katakana script in Year Seven in such a short time.

Congratulations on your remarkable achievements Year Sevens. Well done.

Lakshmi Weeraratne

Japanese teacher / Languages Learning Area Manager