Middle Years

Melbourne Experience and Year 8 YOLO Day

Last week the Year 9s completed their City Experience, which forms the Urban component of the Year 9 Experience. Year 9 students spent the week living and learning in the city, staying at the Space Hotel each night and based at City Cite (on Flinders Street) during the school day. They learned to navigate and make their own way around the city using public transport and also saw a range of different perspectives from an Islamic/Muslim speaker, marginalised/homeless people, an ex-gambler and a guest speaker from Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation (an organisation that rescues trafficked children in Vietnam). 

It was a real pleasure to witness the growth of the Year 9s over the course of the week. They all stretched their comfort zones and learned to walk in another person's shoes. Our students were polite, caring, adventurous, supportive, and a fun group of young individuals. All of our guest speakers over the course of the week commented about how polite, engaged and well behaved our Year 9 cohort was. I look forward to taking them to Vietnam in Term 3, as part of the international component of the Year 9 Experience and seeing all that they accomplish this year and beyond. 

Thank you to Mrs Malseed, Miss Johnson, Mr Chen and Rosie Baker (our GAP student) for all of their help and support over the week. Also, a big thankyou to Mrs Hausler for all of her hard work in organising the Melbourne Experience. 

Later this term the Year 8s will participate in their YOLO day at Mirrinatwa. I hope that they too can learn from the group and individual activities that form part of the YOLO program. This is an exciting day for the Year 8s using experiential and Positive Education activities to build positive relationships. Through teamwork, students will need to communicate, acknowledge different abilities, work together, fail and recover. 

It is a busy time in the Middle Years and I look forward to seeing the Year 8s grow and develop next week.