Alpine School of Student Leadership

25th July 2018

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The college is once again fortunate to have sent two Year 9 students to the ‘Snowy River Campus’ of the ‘School for Student Leadership’ for Term 3. Vatiseva Vatulawa and Sylvia Carter are now in their third week at the 9 week residential camp. The girls are living with another 43 students from across the Loddon and North Metropolitan school regions. During their time at Snowy, the girls will develop a Community Learning Project to put into place, on their return in term 4.  The girl’s project is as follows:

 

            ‘Our vision is to express the different cultures within our community of Robinvale. With the help from local bakeries, churches, schools, family and friends, we aim to create a multicultural cookbook filled with family recipes and stories form the diverse community of Robinvale. This is an opportunity to showcase what this small town has to offer.”

 

If you are willing to part with some of your family and or cultural recipes for the cookbook, please contact Mrs Heather Conner, our SSL School Liaison Teacher, who will send your details to the girls so they can make contact with you to gather your recipes and your stories behind the recipes.

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Newsletter - August

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Hello & Welcome

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My name is Vatiseva Vatulawa and I’m from Robinvale College. The reason I wanted to get involved with the School of Student Leadership (SSL) at the Snowy River Campus was so I could expand my knowledge and skills of being a leader, a better person in mind and body, and so that I could experience the things kids my age would love to do in their later years of growing up. But I guess the main reason was I wanted to show my family, mostly my Mum and younger sister, that I could take that big step to achieve what I've always wanted to do and so that they know I'm willing to try and be open-minded, strong and be a leader in my future life.

My highlights so far that I’ve enjoyed learning are, that I’m able to do morning boxing outside, go fishing on my rest day, climb a sand mountain, do surfing and snorkelling and heaps more.

The SSL is a lot different from a normal school because it doesn’t do the normal subjects like English, Maths, Humanities and other subjects, what they do teach us, are the skills for trusting your peers through trust exercises and games, bridge building where you work together in two different teams to make a bridge over an invisible river, expo skills for later on overnight expo’s, presentation skills where you talk about something you love or am interested in and so on.

Each student will have a couple of days where you have to stand up with a different school peer and be student leader for the day so to be exact you have to make announcements, call out who’s on duties and more. As I said, every day, every group like Core 1 and Core 2 or even everyone else who wants to, has a duty like Breakfast setup, overnight supervisors for bathroom and laundry, breakfast pack-up, morning tea setup and packup, lunch setup, serve and pack-up, afternoon tea setup and pack-up, and dinner setup and pack-up, plus we have chicken duties. There are also committees like bikes maintenance, library duty, T-shirt design, building, and sports committees. The meals are amazing here there is Pasta Monday, Chicken Tuesday, Vegetarian Wednesday, Pastry Thursday, Fish Friday, and Barbeque Saturday.

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Now the bedrooms aren’t too bad there’s a bunkbed, and underneath the bunkbed are two separate closets, and a medium sized bed that’s attached to the bunkbed. Recently we had our first expo, we started at Point Ricardo, we had to walk along the beach to reach Salmon Rocks by lunch and continue towards one of the Marlo campsites. While we were walking along the beach we saw a baby seal waddling towards the beach, it was so small, later on we arrived at Salmon Rocks. Once we had lunch we packed up and continued the walk once where we came across a wombat that was close by near the bushes. Finally, we arrived at the campsites, we set up the tents and afterwards had dinner which was really nice and after that we had milo and marshmallows.

The next day we had to ride bikes all the way back to Snowy River Campus, it was difficult but we made it, it was exhausting but we achieved it.

 

I would highly recommend anyone who has the guts to come here, gain experience and heaps more. My indoor activity would be playing card games a lot, and my outdoor activity would be going to visit our spirit spot every Saturday evening.

Being here on campus is amazing but when you are away from family it’s upsetting, but we’re able to send letters and emails which is really nice when family at home get it and they send letters or emails back, it’s just heart-warming.

Being a part of a community here at SSL is really different and we all have to pitch in on helping each other out in all situations. While being here I guess I’ve achieved some minor things like being able to not be shy and get out there and talk to other school kids on my own, and just trying your best and such, but what I’ve achieved still needs working on so that I’m finally able to stand up in front of my peers and make important announcements and be a leader.

It is still a work in progress but I feel like I’m actually achieving things while here at Snowy River Campus. Best decision I’ve made and that my family was able to support me in coming such a long way from home and wanting to accomplish many things.

 

So thanks to my family back at home in Robinvale, to the teachers at Robinvale College, and the teachers here at Snowy River Campus.