In August 2002 Debating SA was contacted by the Adelaide City Council and offered the opportunity to work with Rebecca Cox from the Council and Anita Zocchi from Adelaide High School to develop a two day training course on Leadership, Public Speaking, Teamwork, Conflict Resolution and Active Listening. The course was to be presented to students who wished to become Peer Support Leaders in the school during 2003. The role of these students would be to ensure a successful transition into high school for the new Year 8 students.
Over the next few months Julie Miller and John Maxwell met regularly with Rebecca and Anita to keep them abreast of the progress of the course and check the content.
“It was a challenge for us to produce the course as well as maintaining the day to day operations of the Association, however as the course came together we were sure it would be a hit with the kids.” – Julie Miller, Operations Manager.
On December 2nd & 3rd 2002, Students’ Debating SA in conjunction with Adelaide City Council held a workshop at the Methodist Meeting Hall for 52 year 10 students from Adelaide High School, facilitated by Julie Miller, John Maxwell and Peyi Pey Guo.
The students were apprehensive as they entered the hall, but as the first lecture on Leadership began they realised that this was very different information than what they were expecting. After the brief lecture, the students were broken into groups for a game. The obvious leaders were removed from the group and designated as reporters who were unable to communicate with the group members.
These strong leaders found it very difficult to let their groups make mistakes and learn for themselves. The point of the exercise for the stronger leaders was to make them aware that they need to trust their team-mates to complete the task.
In the rest of the group, some new leaders developed. These sub leaders may have never had a chance to grow into their leadership with the stronger leaders present. This group on the whole was able to work with the team to complete the task at hand.
“Young people are an important part of the City”
For the leadership and teamwork aspects of the course, we decided to follow renowned authors John C. Maxwell and Stephen Covey, and heavily recommended their books to students. We made the students aware that they needed to trust their charges and listen to their reasons before jumping to conclusions.
“Adelaide City Council was pleased to be able to support 50 young people learn leadership and other skills that will support them to take on roles in their local communities. Young people are an important part of the City, making up the second biggest group of people who study, work, live or visit Adelaide, and therefore Adelaide City Council considers it imperative that young people have the skills to contribute meaningfully to the life of their community.” – Rebecca Cox, Adelaide City Council.
Anita Zocchi, Assistant Principal at Adelaide High School, said: “At AHS we have used the staff from Debating SA to work with our Year 10 students on our Peer Support program. The staff were keen, and kept in contact with the school during the planning stage to ensure our program matched our needs. It was a huge success! The students were challenged, engaged and all felt they had learnt skills for life, not just for school. They learnt about leadership, and how to work effectively as a team, and most of all had a lot of fun doing it. The result is that we have a great bunch of leaders in Year 11 who have been committed to the Peer Support program. Some of these students hadn’t been identified as leaders prior to this, and I believe the tasks run by Students’ Debating SA and the opportunity allowed them to shine.”
The two day course culminated in the Lord Mayor of Adelaide, Alfred Huang, presenting students with a certificate to remember the experience. Claudia Dias Mendes, a student from Adelaide High School, presented her speech from the public speaking module of the workshop which summed up the students’ surprise at the high level of knowledge gained by participation.
“I believe the tasks run by Debating SA and the opportunity allowed the students to shine.”