Year 12 Retreat

From the 5th – 7th of February, this year’s Year 12s headed off to the Geelong Conference Centre for Retreat. It was 3 days filled with fun activities and informative lectures that will really help us tackle their final year of school.

Retreat kicked off with a trip to Geelong beach for paddle boarding and team building exercises. After the semi-failed attempt at team building exercises and all the whining that came from it, the Year 12s were off again; this time to freely explore the city of Geelong.

Upon our return to the conference centre, we were given a coloured ribbon that represented our team for the rest of our time there. We came up with team names (some more appropriate than others) and we were ready for competition.

We finished the night with a great feed and an informative English lecture, before crashing hard in our lovely hotel style rooms.

The next day, we participated in a range of mindfulness activities, designed to relieve stress. These included yoga, Fishing, colouring in, beach walks, fitness bootcamp and more. 

During fishing, the total number of fish caught was 1. This was caught by none other than me, Dylan.

Later that day, these teams competed in the Staughton survivor which consisted of the 3-legged race, egg and spoon race, table tennis, connect four and giant Jenga. The teams were not only rewarded points for placing first, second or third place but were rewarded points for sportsmanship, effort and participation in each event.

Later that day, the teams all participated in a trivia night with pizza and a talent show. It was an awesome night, with a very interesting presentation from some of our students that will go down in history.

The next day, all the points were tallied up and the winning team was PINK.

Throughout the three days we had enjoyed lectures around English Literature and English Language, a VCE lecture and a motivational speaker.

The main goal of the retreat was to teach students how to deal with stress effectively and cope with the chaos of their final year. In all, we all had a great time, and think that this year’s Retreat was a success.

- Camryn Duncan and Dylan Oliveira