Student Exchange: Outdoor Education in the Australian Countryside

Posted on April 3, 2017 by admin

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After by far the longest trip of my life, my exchange, Thijs, and I landed In Adelaide Airport on Friday, March 10, and were immediately greeted by his family and two of his friends who had left school early to come pick us up. Despite our jetlag, Thijs and I didn’t have much time to relax, as we had to pack for a two-week outdoor education trip called Westventure. We were leaving in less than two days! When we arrived at Westminster School early Sunday morning ready to get on the bus, I was so nervous. I was about to spend the next two weeks in the Australian countryside with Thijs and 30 strangers.

When we arrived, we were immediately thrown into sailing and kayaking sessions. After a few days, which included three sailing lessons, three kayaking lessons, an overnight hike and three 5km runs, we were already exhausted. However, the constant physical activities and team-building challenges didn’t give us time to be tired. On the fourth day, we embarked on our unassisted sail to a small town called Milang. In Milang, we spent some of the money we brought to Westventure in the downtown area. We wandered around the town, eating real food and throwing a Frisbee around in a park. We finally had some time to relax. The next day, we woke up bright and early to pack up and kayak back to camp. It was a rough awakening back to reality, because the following morning, we had to run 17km in a group of eight. We had to stay together the whole time and cross the finish line as a group. It turned out to be more of a teamwork exercise than a physical one. Our next challenge was paddling to a small strip of Aboriginal land called the Coorong. We arrived, and set up our campsite. We were right on the Coorong Channel, but if you walked 1.5km away from the water, you would reach the Southern Ocean. While we were there, we went on a guided environmental walk. Our guides were Aboriginal elders, and they knew everything about the Coorong. I learned a lot about which plants you should and shouldn’t eat in South Australia. We also went over to the ocean beach, played beach games and just let loose and had fun. We then sailed back to the campsite and woke up early for the individual 17km run. This was the last challenge on Westventure, and the following day we went back to Adelaide.

The day we got back, it was day 1 of Sports Day, their equivalent of Shourawe. Apparently, I had been signed up for 800m and 1500m races, because no one else wanted to do them. My 1500m was that day, and my 800m was the following day. I was a bit sore, but still did pretty well. Luckily, so did the rest of my house, because we won Sports Day.

All in all, Westventure was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I will never forget it. I made countless memories, learned many new things, developed great friendships, and even discovered a lot about myself. I look forward to the rest of my stay, including meeting everyone who wasn’t in my camp, going to school, and all the memories yet to be made. – William Hamilton ’19, Exchange Student at Westminster School

Student Exchange: Beach Fun in Australia

Posted on March 9, 2017 by admin

I have now been in Melbourne for one month and I can’t believe how fast time is flying by! Going on an exchange should be for three months instead of just six weeks, even though I think that would go by very quickly too. I cannot believe that I will be going home in only two weeks. It makes me so sad.

I have done so much these past few weeks. We have been busy pretty much every second of every day!

We went to Sydney for a weekend and even though it was raining almost the whole time, it was very cool to see the differences between Sydney and Melbourne. We climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and it was amazing to see the harbour from the top of the bridge. I learnt about how the bridge was built. No harnesses were used!. We went to Bondi Beach where there was a surfing competition and got to see all the men and women surfing in the rain.

A few days later, back in Melbourne, we went to a beach where we swam in the ocean, jumped off a pier and climbed rocks. When we reached the top of the rocks, the view was incredible! It is weird to think that people live so close to these beautiful beaches. How lucky are that they to get to go swimming in the ocean after school any time they want!

On Monday, I went to the zoo with the exchanges from the UK who just arrived. The zoo was very cool and we saw a bunch of different Australian animals, including kangaroos and koalas. I got so close to the kangaroos; they weren’t even in cages!

The UK exchanges are from two different schools and even though they are all friends from home, they included me and were so nice to me from the start. Yesterday, we went on an excursion to the beach with the year below us. We got to look at rocks and sit and talk together on the beach.

We went to another beach last week and after swimming for half an hour, we were quickly rushed out because there was a shark! When this happened, you could tell who the tourists were and who the locals were. The tourists quickly rushed out of the water while the locals, like my host family, took their time and swam for another five minutes because they knew a shark wouldn’t come that close to shore.

My host family is so welcoming and nice. They treat me like I am part of their family. I am trying so many new activities and foods with them. They even put me on Pip’s community basketball team with her so that we could play together on weekends. It is such an incredible experience to see how families on the other side of the world live. At the same time, it’s amazing to discover the similarities between how my host family lives and how my own family lives.

I truly feel at home here. They are all even getting used to my accent. I don’t even notice the Australian accent anymore and when I speak to people from Montreal I am starting to notice theirs!

As you can see, I am having the best time and can’t believe how quickly it is going by. It feels like yesterday that my parents were driving me to the airport. As much as I miss everyone, I am not ready to go home yet. I am going to enjoy every second of my last two weeks here and I am hopeful that in my future, there will be a chance to come back and visit my new friends. As sad as it will be to leave, at least I know that two weeks after I get home, I will have the chance to host Pip and introduce her to my family and to everyone at LCC. Hopefully she will enjoy the experience as much as I am! – Riley Fersten ’19, Exchange Student at Carey Baptist Grammar School

Lessons Learned at the Mackay Centre

Posted on February 28, 2017 by admin

Mackay_Centre During our trip to the Mackay Centre, we learned many valuable lessons…

By finding different ways to communicate with the kids, we were able to connect and learn about them. We learned that we are all children of the same world and no one should pass judgement based on appearance. We realized that even if their lives are different than ours, it is easier for them to communicate with us than vice versa. We learned that these kids spend weeks at hospitals on a regular basis, but come back to school with the biggest smiles on their faces. They always look on the bright side of life.

Overall, our time at the Mackay Centre was incredible, and we hope to see the kids’ happy faces again. This meaningful activity is a perfect illustration of the “service spirit” of Round Square.

We would like to thank The Mackay Centre, Kirsten Hardiman and Mrs. Levinson for helping to organize this activity.

Kirsten Hardiman ’20, Matthew Anzarouth ’20, Leah Lavoie ’21, Alexia Winter-Reinhold ’21, Zoë Topiol ’21, Aliya Khan ’21, Connor Salpeter ’20

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Student Exchange: Getting a Taste of Sydney

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Harbour_Bridge After twenty-two hours of flying and layovers, I finally got to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport on Sunday, February 26. I got my bag in less than 15 minutes and met my exchange, Sarah, at the arrivals gate. When we stepped outside, it was very humid and I was thankful for the shorts I put on before landing. I slept for about ten hours on the plane so by the time I landed, I wasn’t tired, and I had enough energy to walk around.

Sarah’s dad dropped us off in downtown Sydney, and the two of us walked around the water. We went up to the Sydney Opera house and continued into the area known as the Rocks, where there was an outdoor market. Then we got lunch from a really good bakery and ended our day in the city by going to Woolworths, a grocery store, to get different types of Australian food. I tried a whole bunch of Aussie treats and, of course, I tried Vegemite: a mixture of salt and yeast that tasted like salt water to me.

When we went back to Sarah’s house at the end of the day we got our things ready for school, baked muffins, and ate dinner outside. Their backyard was filled with different types of parrots that were flying all around us while we ate.

The next day was my first day at school and it was really nice. The school is on two separate campuses that are just down the street from each other. Instead of advisory, they have something called lunary, which we have twice a week with our house, Whitley. At Methodist Ladies’ College, we have to bring our own lunches and snacks, but they do have a nice cafe that they call the canteen, where you can buy food.

So far, this trip has been amazing. I was able to travel here on my own through three different time zones, I’m on the other side of the world experiencing new cultures and going to a new school, and I’m having a lot of fun. – Ella Waxman ’19, Student Exchange at Methodist Ladies’ College

Head’s Blog: Pink Shirt Day

Posted on February 23, 2017 by admin

Pink_Shirt_Day It was Pink Shirt Day on Wednesday all across Canada. It’s an initiative that was started some years ago by two courageous boys in a high school in Nova Scotia. They openly and actively defended a new student, a younger boy in grade 9, who was taking heat from some students for wearing pink. In an act of solidarity and support, the two senior boys got their hands on dozens of pink t-shirts and issued them to boys as they entered the school one morning.

From those roots, Pink Shirt Day developed into a national awareness campaign against bullying. In addition to wearing pink, participants are asked to practice acts of kindness and do whatever they can to minimize physical, emotional and online bullying in their communities.

Pink Shirt Day is a call to action to students to build awareness and defend weaker kids whenever and wherever they can.

This campaign reminds me of some striking experiences I had a few years ago while visiting public high schools in Bogota, Colombia. We currently have a couple of Round Square exchange students at LCC from Bogota (Andrea and Juan). Given that Pink Shirt Day is essentially about creating a safe and peaceful learning environment, I’m sure they’re very proud that the most recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is their president, Señor Juan Manuel Santos.

From the early 1960s to 2013, known to all Colombians as La Violencia, civil war dominated Colombian life. Last fall, after four years of negotiations with a revolutionary guerrilla group called FARC and other smaller groups, President Santos managed to finalize a peace treaty with the FARC, which had waged a decades-long civil war against the government.

According to a study by Colombia’s National Centre for Historical Memory, 220,000 people died in the conflict between 1958 and 2013, most of them civilians. Also, more than five million civilians were forced from their homes between 1985 and 2012, generating the world’s second largest population of internally displaced persons.

During my visit to Colombia, I had the privilege of seeing and experiencing the country with about two dozen school principals from all around the world. Our focus was on how to build peaceful communities in our schools. After years of civil war, educators in Colombia had much to teach us. We visited 15 schools in several different communities. Two of the visits were particularly memorable:

The first was with student leaders in a large high school who had decided to call themselves “Agents of Peace.” Each young leader wore an armband or a vest identifying him or her as a “Peacemaker.” Believing that there had been too much violence around them for too long, and that adults hadn’t really been able to model peaceful resolution, the students focused on ways to implement peaceful conflict resolution as the top priority in their school. These students were impressive and engaging. They were proud, clear about their priorities, and intentional about establishing peace as a norm in their school and beyond.

The second special visit was a performance at a Colombian arts school with a wonderful private dance troupe. Each of the dancers originally came from the poorest communities or barrios in Bogota. The older dancers (in their 20s and 30s) had been doing this for years and developed into an internationally recognized dance troupe. That day, they modeled how they actively paid it forward with younger students. They showed how they taught young kids from the poorest communities of Bogota how to dance. As the founder and director of the troupe told us, the young students had seen and experienced too much violence and suffered daily from the poverty in their lives. Learning to dance gave them skills, confidence, and a sense of peace and calm – something that was relatively absent in their lives of struggle.

These experiences were important reminders that acts of kindness and agents of peace come in different forms and exist in many different cultures.

I think we all have a responsibility to contribute to sowing seeds of kindness, empathy and care in our communities, wherever we are. Today I think this is particularly important. We don’t have to agree with one another all the time, but we do need to be respectful and accepting of difference at all times. These norms, these foundational values, matter a great deal.

I was proud to wear pink on Wednesday, and hope we will all stand up for the weak or the victims of bullying and harassment, whenever we are aware of it.

My thanks to those students in Nova Scotia and Colombia for reminding us all that we each have an important duty of care in our community. I hope that you regularly practice kindness and acceptance every day. Remember, peace, acceptance and trust form the bedrock of healthy communities everywhere. – Chris Shannon, Headmaster