What a phenomenal day at the Stonecutters Ridge Golf Course. The day started off with some icebreaker activities including Redfield, Wollemi and Montgrove all participating with some questions being thrown at us to break the silence that was around when we arrived. Our first guest speaker Seb Burfitt arrived and gave us a talk about how to be a people's leader and how to do the ‘uncool’ thing as a leader and make sure not to develop tall poppy syndrome that is prominent around schools. Seb’s amazing talk taught us all a valuable lesson on being a people person and how it is important to develop relationships with not just people in your class, but everyone in the school. After this, recess and lunch allowed everyone to talk and bond with a bit more freedom.
Our second and last guest speakers of the day were some Wollemi old boys Joseph Hoffman and Michael Kerbage. We received some advice about planning out your year as a leader and how decisions made by the captains should be made and influenced by peers. This makes sure that your year and school get what they think is best for them and I think this was a bit of a wake up call for the boys, especially me, about planning out the future. After the questions, we had a bit of Q & A with Joseph and Michael after lunch getting advice on how to handle sticky situations that come with being a leader and how to handle some situations that we are facing now. Finally, the day ended off with a bit of collaboration with the boys on how we could improve certain aspects of the school and how we could achieve it.
William M., Year 12 Mundoora House Captain
So, last week, we had a Leadership Conference with Montgrove and Redfield. Oddly, the other schools didn’t bring their younger leaders, so the conference was mainly aimed towards the seniors. We had a nice presentation from our Guest Speaker, Sebastian Burfitt, who talked about the makings of a leader: someone who was authentic, who could service and sacrifice, and most striking to me, someone who could actually “lead” their peers. Afterwards, we had a Q&A Panel with two Wollemi Alumni - Joseph Hoffman and Michael Kerbage. They brought up many enjoyable anecdotes from their past as students, which were both fun and taught valuable lessons. I think my most important takeaway from their panel was Joseph Hoffman’s advice - that the best thing to do was to be friends with Jesus and to keep him first in our life, especially as a leader. We ended the day off with some proposals that each school’s SRC could work on, and presented these ideas and ways we could execute them, keeping in mind the valuable lessons we had been taught by our Guest Speakers. This experience was fun, and I hope that it continues on in the future! Special thanks to Mr James and Mr Johnson for hosting and making it as enjoyable as possible.
Theo L.Year 8 Student Representative Council
