Year 9 Myself Program

Year 9 MyPhoto: excursion to Melbourne

For this terms MyPhoto class, we began to plan excursions to places around Melbourne. The plan was to take photos of nature, people, buildings, and artwork at different places throughout Melbourne's CBD and suburbs. We first decided to go to ACMI which is a museum of screen culture which includes various forms of information about screen and media around Australia as well as interactive activities such as video games and light projection control. 

During this excursion, we also visited Hosier Lane which is well known for its graffiti and artwork. The next excursion we organised was to St Kilda to take photos of the beach and buildings such as Luna Park and the Palais Theatre. I have enjoyed learning new things about photography this term in MyPhoto and I am looking forward to upcoming excursions. 

Haylee T. 9G

Year 9 MyCity : excursion to the O’Brien Icehouse

Wednesday, 19 May marked the second excursion of the term for forty of our Year 9 students, as part of the MyCity program. To sum it up in one word, it was a PERFECT day. The weather was good, the students were great and we all had lots of fun.

We left the school in the morning around 10.30 am and we travelled together to the Icehouse in Docklands, by public transportation. There, the students had an introductory lesson on ice skating and then off they went, trying to emulate the feats of famous legends like Evgeni Plushenko and Katarina Witt. Many of them put the skates on for the very first time and it was amazing to see how quickly they were able to pick up and start enjoying the whole experience. After a good hour of tireless manoeuvres, during which we also had the opportunity and pleasure to observe some professional skaters in their training, we had a quick bite and then it was time to catch the tram and bus and head back to school.

Students were able to build their resilience, develop new skills, overcome challenges and learn to get back up promptly after they (literally) fall.

Maria Cagiati

Italian Language Assistant

Year 9 MyCity: the analogy of ice skating and life

Recently, I took my Year 9 students on an excursion to go ice skating. After my turn on the ice skating rink and watching the students have a go, I started to think that in some ways ice skating is a lot like life. 

In life, we have many falls. We have our ups and we have our downs. The most important thing is that we always climb back on our feet and go forward. When we ice skated many of us fell over. And again the most important thing was that we got up and continued ice skating. So the moral of this story is we all fall over at some point in our lives and sometimes we're confronted with problems that seem to be huge obstacles.  If we keep the thought in mind that we must get up again and move forward, we can achieve anything. The only person stopping you from doing this is yourself. 

So how does this relate to my students? 

If you don’t achieve the result you want on your next test or exam, remember always get up and try again, just like you did on the ice skating rink! I like to think about it like this: 

Trying again and again = Achievements

Giving up = Failure

If you fell over on the ice skating rink and didn't get up right away, you would get extremely wet and cold. However, if you bounce back up straight away, you will be ready to go right away.

Ning Zhang

Year 9 MySelf Teacher