English News 

PESA State Finals

On Friday 21 June three other students and myself attended the PESA State final, held on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. Of the students attending, two of us competed in the competition; Corbin Afanasyev and Ananya Srihari both made the monumental accomplishment of making it to the State finals to represent Nossal. Participants from competing schools spoke eloquently on topics of major importance, including climate change and threats to linguistic and cultural heritage in Australia. Our own two students Corbin and Ananya delivered exceptional speeches on the topics “The Culture War” and “Material Success” respectively.

The competition involved two rounds, one in which each of the six speakers competing delivered their pre-prepared speech, and another impromptu round in which competitors were granted a mere four minutes to prepare a three-minute speech in response to the prompt “Failure Brings Opportunity”. Granted that the competitors spoke at such a high calibre, it was unsurprising that the judges faced great difficulty in discerning a winner. This culminated in the first tiebreaker round in the history of the competition, between our own Corbin Afanasyev and Wesley Chen of Caulfield Grammar School, Bunurong Country. The tiebreaker round consisted of an impromptu speech on the topic “Words can Change Worlds”, and both speakers delivered evocative, extraordinarily well constructed speeches. Ultimately, Corbin took the place of State runner up, a grand accomplishment for Nossal High School of Bunurong Country. Thank you to Mr Ninis for accompanying us to the event, and many thanks also to Ms Faulkner for organising the event. We were grateful too that Mr and Mrs Page attended, along with Ms Mackin.

A livestream of the event can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/pqtEpUTfY9M

Max Richards - Year 12