Kindness is Key. This is the student leadership focus for this year and it was developed during this year’s student leadership camp.
On Wednesday, 14th February, a group of eager student leaders from Years 7-12 met at school and travelled into the Melbourne CBD for three days of leadership activities, planning and some fun stuff too. We made it despite major train delays on our trip in – teaching us about resilience and perseverance.
We talked about our student leadership model for the year – the five things we are going to do to strengthen our school community and our own skills: model our values, imagine possibilities, experiment and take risks, strengthen others and celebrate success. This model led the rest of our discussion and planning for the remaining time of the camp and our first afternoon was spent working in our specific leadership areas and discussing what we wanted to focus on.
We started our second day by practising mindfulness through a meditation or stretching session and then went to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre to learn about how we can support and welcome people seeking asylum. The ideas we discussed with Jonathan at the ASRC linked in clearly with the ideas that we had already started to put together – namely that we want our school to be welcoming, inspiring and positive and that we think that this can be developed from an emphasis on kindness. We went ice-skating on Thursday night and it was great to see people helping each other out on the ice and encouraging each other.
On Friday, after packing up, we had our final group meetings where we discussed what we were hoping to achieve by the end of Term 1. Everyone had amazing ideas so keep an eye out as these plans take shape.
We are hoping that everyone in the ESC community will help support us with our focus and embody the idea that kindness is key.