student leadership
A Year in Review
2016 has been a year jam packed with opportunities for enhancing student leadership and voice!
The SRC year level representatives have been busy running major events throughout the year. Some of the highlights include Harmony Day, where we celebrated the diverse cultural and ethnic groups at our school and raised over $1700 for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) Day was another huge success for the SRC. The SRC students worked alongside the Peer Support Leaders and Merri Health to run events throughout the day to raise awareness of the discrimination that same sex attracted and gender diverse people still face. Students worked together to create a rainbow on the basketball court to show their commitment to ending this discrimination.
The friendly rivalry between the BSC Senior Students and the MSSS Seniors continued to grow during our Seniors v Seniors Trivia Event. This event gave students and senior members of our community a chance to develop friendships and learn about the pop culture and interests across the different generations.
Students had the opportunity to have their voices heard on a range of meaningful issues this year. For instance, the Student Executive examined the responses to the Bullying Survey trend data from 2014-2016 and gave feedback on reasons for the data and how to improve it. Students found that there is an overall reduction in bullying that occurs at Brunswick Secondary College and that bullying tends to decrease in the senior school years. In consultation with leadership staff, it was decided that ongoing activities and programs about bullying should be run throughout the school year to ensure that the issue is regularly discussed and students are educated about the impacts of bullying. The Student Executive shared the responses and feedback with the wider study body at a whole school assembly.
The SRC and Student Executive have worked closely with the VicSRC, the peak body representing secondary students in Victoria, in 2016. Several of our SRC year level representatives attended the VicSRC Regional Conference; where they discussed issues in our local schools and meaningful ways that students can work with teachers to solve them. One of our SRC members, Carrie Churchward, attended the VicSRC Congress, a three day ‘explosion of student voice’ held at The University of Melbourne. Following these events, the VicSRC invited BSC students to participate in more opportunities. For the first time at BSC, students ran the Teach the Teacher program (renamed Collaborative Classrooms) at BSC which was supported by VicSRC. The full report on this program is below. Our students were invited to attend and participate in the ‘Students as Knowledge Makers: Rejuvenating Curriculum’ forum at Victoria University.
Gabriel Taburet
2016 Debating & Public Speaking Captain
Attending the Students as Knowledge Makers: Rejuvenating Curriculum excursion at Victoria University was an insightful experience, and surprisingly interesting. We were told of different ways students can become involved in their own learning and in the ways in which they can learn - through methods such as a cohort- or class-wide research tasks - as well as how students can be the catalyst and cause for change around their school. Examples included a school which, to solve their 'wagging' issue, employed the expert students to solve the problem; that is, the school's top waggers! These expert waggers were able to identify why students were frequently wagging and come up with a solution, thus the wagging problem in the school ceased. This was just one of the many examples of how students can involve themselves around their school.
The VicSRC invited the BSC SRC and Student Executive to showcase their best practice in student leadership and voice at the Engaging Authentic Student Voice in Catholic Schools professional development day at the Catholic Leadership Centre. The aim of the professional development day was to highlight successful models of student leadership and methods for enhancing student voice. It was an honour to be invited. Sasha Gillies-Lekakis, one of BSC’s 2017 School Captains, designed and presented a 20 minute presentation that outlined the student leadership and voice structure at BSC. This presentation was well received and led to in depth conversations between academics, teachers, principals and students about how to ensure student leadership programs are successful in schools.
