Student Leadership
The Alpine School for Student Leadership 2017;
Reflections from our Year 9 students.
Gnurad Gundidj was a ten-week program, located three hours away from our family, with emails and letters as our only way of contact. Most of us had only been away from home on week-long camps – and suddenly, our parents were waving goodbye, their next visit five weeks away. The first few days – the first couple of weeks, actually – were easy. We were settling in, making friends, finding our place, discovering new things, and then, homesickness seemed to hit all at once – nights alone, craving home, missing old friends (and our phones!).
Gnurad was a personal struggle in so many ways, but the separation from our home, family and school was one of the hardest things to overcome. But, like every challenge we faced, it became an opportunity to learn – to learn about ourselves, to learn how to cope alone, and learn independence skills we never could have otherwise.
Gnurad became our home, and re-integrating into our old life proved to be harder than beginning life at Gnurad had ever been. But I – and the whole Frankston High School team – are grateful for our short time there, and everything we learned from our separation from home.
-Abby Strangward
When I went to SSL every school did something called a CLP (Community Learning Project). Our community learning project had to be something that benefited or helped the community in some way. We had the whole ten weeks to work on this and it would then be something that we presented to the whole school, locals, past students and teachers of our school. We did our CLP about cancer and we chose this because our group has a personal connection with cancer and many others we know have had or are going through the battle of cancer. Our CLP has been a great success and we hope that we can continue it now that we are back at school.
-Will Rear
Expo was an amazing opportunity. An expo is when we leave Gnurad-Gundidj for two to three days to go hiking and tandem bike riding. We did two expos, each one bringing its own challenges. A week before each expo we would start planning what food we wanted to take. For the first expo, we had to walk 12km and then the next day ride 18km on a tandem bike. We did this along the Timboon to Camperdown Rail Trail. We walked the 12km with bags weighing in at about 15-20kg. These bags held our tents, cooking equipment, food, clothes and water. The next day we rode the tandem bikes for 18km. The rail trail went through some forest areas which held the dreaded leeches. We had some pretty large ones attached to some of us.
This expo was very challenging. The second expo was the real deal. We had to plan our way to our designated campsites. This expo took three days and was through Mount Eccles National Park. Again we had to carry everything we needed, each day the weight going down because of the food we ate. We had to navigate our way through the Park every day using a map and a compass. This really tested our newly learnt skills, or we may have got lost a few times! The Park was truly amazing with caves and canals. On the last day we walked through a massive lava canal, stretching about 3km, which was full of leeches. Overall the expos really pushed us out of our comfort zones but were really fun.
-Blake Shaw
At Gnurad-Gundidj we’ve all had the opportunity to participate in various outdoor classes which was not only fun, but occasionally challenged us to step out of our comfort zones and apply some of the leadership skills we learnt. Some of the classes were:
Hike up Mt. Noorat, Surf/Explore, Mystery Tour, Gender Day, Mountain Bike Riding and Teams Day. My favourite was Bridge and Raft Building.
We did Bridge Building at the start of the term and basically our aim was to build a bridge using wood and ropes. Although the bridge itself had some significance, the point was about using the skills we already knew and use them to function as a team. At the end, we weren’t successful in constructing the bridge itself although the lessons we got out of it were valuable. We were able to agree that in the coming weeks we needed to work on our decision making skills. Our initial failure to do so led to confusion and a bit of chaos. Nevertheless, we all had a great time in our attempt to make the bridge.
Similarly, we did Raft Building in the last week of the program. The aim was exactly the same as Bridge Building, however, the only difference was we had to build a Raft. We successfully made a raft and were able to use it in a Lake at Warrnambool. But, about 10-15 minutes into the water our raft started to fall apart. It was quite an amusement! At least we had fun and built a raft!
-Tavi Sharma
I loved the school and everything I gained from it. People ask what skills you get out of it, and it honestly varies so much from person to person. The school is very goal focused, so if you want to gain a skill, pick a goal, they will teach you some tools, and the rest is up to you.
We had many opportunities to put these goals to work, and at different times they gave us feedback friends to offer us positive and critical feedback to improve on. Students around me gained things from stepping up to stepping down, both very different but catered for and important to, the individual. I feel I have definitely come out of my shell from my experience at Alpine, including stepping up and adding to discussions much more now.
-Jemimah Wilksch
At Gnurad we spent about 75% of our time doing indoor classes, such as Metacognition, Social-Awareness, Self-Awareness and Cultural Diversity. My favourite indoor class was T&L Personality, in which we did a Myers Briggs personality quiz. We were then given the results, which told us about how we would behave in certain situations, e.g.as, as parents, in relationships and in the workplace. The results were scarily accurate. My personality type was ENFP, which stands for Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving and is the same personality type as Robert Downey Jr, Walt Disney and Anne Frank.
- Audrey Cousins