English & Literacy

Getting to know our year 7 students is a major focus of our year 7 English Curriculum in term one. It has been a privilege reading about their lives and finding out about significant moments that have had a lasting impact on them. We hope that you enjoy Kate Elliot’s piece as much as we did.

Hearing Malala Yousafi speak

You never realise how lucky you are until you hear other people’s stories, having a roof above your head, a mattress to sleep on and even an education, are all taken for granted these days. Have you ever stopped to think about how lucky you are? To live in a country with no wars, to be able to go to school and even to drink clean water, these are the privileges that we don’t think about enough and often let go unnoticed.

I realised how privileged I was and how much I took for granted after hearing the courageous story of Malala Yousafi, this strong women and her family had gone through so much pain and suffering just to get a right to girls’ education. In Malala’s home country Pakistan, the Taliban ( a group of Afghan people) had different views on girl’s education to the rest of the world. Their beliefs included that any girl should not have the right to an education. So, for example at Wantirna College, any female student would have been expelled from the school and would have no access to any form of education at all. If the school insisted on girls going to school the College would be bombed, listening to this made me furious, and even today thinking about it today makes my blood boil.

Malala though, made a stand against the Taliban and continued going to school, which resulted to her being shot 3 times in the face, on the local bus on the way to school. This was empowering and inspiring  to hear about the sacrifices she would make just for an education and to get all other girls the rights to an education. It also made me disgusted thinking about the Taliban shooting innocent girls who just wanted to learn. Hearing this story and hearing her say it in person, made me feel so much more grateful for my education I just couldn’t believe the sacrifices she was willing to take, and the pain she went through just to get an education.

Hearing Malala speak made me realise how having all these amazing things and opportunities in my life is such a blessing. Heaps of people in this world barely have the essentials. My feelings and thoughts haven’t changed much from this experience to now, but most certainly my morals have. This talk has heavily impacted me and my emotions, it’s taught me many life lessons and helped me see things in a different light. This has taught me that some people don’t have opportunities to go to school or even get to sleep in a bed, so we need to be more grateful for what we have and start to help people who need it. This life changing experience has helped me in so many ways but overall it has taught me to be grateful for what you have and never take anything for granted. Hearing Malala talk brought on a huge pile of emotions, I was sad in some parts and overjoyed in others, but to me the strongest emotion I felt was gratefulness, I have always felt more grateful from this experience and it’s made me appreciate the smaller things in life.

- by Kate Elliot

Carrie Wallis

English/Whole School Literacy