Leadership Conference by Steph and Christina

LEADERS OF TODAY AND TOMORROW

   

On the 13^th of March 2013, the SRC went to Tower Street Public School to attend a leadership conference called “Leaders of Today and Tomorrow”. The purpose of the conference was for us to learn how to become better leaders. When we got to the conference we were seated in our school group and were given a folder, which contained a booklet about what we were going to do during the day.

We had students from Sir Joseph Banks High School come along to be our mentors. Our mentor was Sir Joseph Banks High School’s Vice-Captain, Mimi Le.

There were five guest speakers. The first speaker was Mr Waser who is the Deputy Principal of Sir Joseph Banks High School. He talked about how we always have to work as a team and not as individuals, to always have a plan and find a way to improve. The second speaker was Kylie Gauci, a Paralympian and Wheelchair Basketballer who played for Australia. Kylie has won three medals; a silver medal in Athens 2004, a bronze medal in Beijing 2008 and a silver medal in London 2012. We got to touch all three of her medals. The London medal was the heaviest. She even won a bronze medal at her first World Championships in 2002. Her goal was to get a gold medal but unfortunately she didn’t reach her goal.

After Kylie left we were given an activity. In our folders we each had a small piece of cardboard with a word on it. The words were respect, trust, effort, persistence, honesty, resilience, confidence and cooperation. We had to write what we thought the words meant.

The next two speakers were Vincent Dinh and Mimi Le, the Vice Captains from Sir Joseph Banks High School. They told us to always have confidence, put in a team effort and give advice to others.

In our next activity we had to answer four different questions. The hardest question was “How can I be a better leader?” Some of the answers were to be a good role model and listen to other people’s questions and ideas.

Lunch was next on the agenda and then we did some team activities. One of the activities was where, as a group, we had to build the highest tower only using newspaper and masking tape.

The last guest speaker was Mrs McKay who is the student Welfare Consultant for East Hills. She talked about how leadership never stops and how you should always talk, listen and think. At the end of the day everyone got a certificate which was presented by Mrs McKay and Mrs Hornung.

Everyone enjoyed the day and we learnt a lot of new things.  We will most definitely become better leaders.

 

BY CHRISTINA ARGIROPOULOS AND STEPHANIE HUNT