Strengthening student voice at Cecil

A key focus of our Community Engagement team for 2023 is to further build on student voice at Cecil Hills by creating more opportunities for students to be heard. As such, we are on a mission to launch our first student-led podcast, which will explore students' passions and areas of interests by Term 1, 2023. Participating students will be challenged to explore our school values of Respect, Responsible, and Successful through their podcasts.

In this project, students will have the opportunity to:

• Have their voice be heard through various community-wide platforms.
• Have their choice to use their skills to drive community collaborations.
• Have positive influence on what they produce, who they interview, and the Cecil student body's attitude towards school life and spirit.
• Work together to promote student interests while building on their communication, collaboration, leadership, and negotiation skills.

The first step to any successful endeavour is proper training. It was, therefore, essential for our team to train students from a range of year groups to ensure upskilling and distribute leadership opportunities across the school. With assistance from our Careers Team, Ms Stephanie Aceglav from Media For Millenials and Ms Rhonda Stone from Training NSW, we were able to bring the Pop-Up Podcast Day to Cecil Hills High School. The full-day workshop enabled our students to learn the basics of podcasting, form their groups, and practice their skills. Here's what some of the participants had to say about their experience:

"I really enjoyed Pop-Up Podcast Day with Stephanie Aceglav and I am thankful for the opportunity!  The podcast my group and I were able to produce gave us all the chance to address engaging topics and express our opinions freely.  In the end, I am happy that I was able to take away valuable software, audio, and editing skills that I will definitely be able to utilise in the future as we start our own podcast at Cecil Hills High School."

Sophie Luong

Year 11 Prefect

"The Pop-Up Podcast Day with Stephanie Aceglav was an entertaining and educational experience that was very hands-on.  The best thing about it is that now I have the confidence that I could make a podcast by myself, which I know can open up great life experiences. I feel like it really upgraded my language skills. As a person who likes to write and listen to stories, podcasting is a great way to share my experiences with others."

Sadeer Al-Zuhairi

Year 9 Student Representative Council

"I really enjoyed the Pop-Up Podcast Day. Learning from a professional was a rare opportunity. We learnt how to host, record, edit, and publish our own podcast - all of which are valuable skills I can use in the future. 

I look forward to working on an episode of our upcoming school podcast."

Max Yang

Year 7 Student

Mr F Floresca

History Teacher

Community Engagement Team Coordinator