This year I joined Student Voice to represent my mentor class. Although I only initially joined because my friends were all doing it as well, I soon realised what an important role we play in terms of being the bridge between students and teachers. We’ve helped to facilitate things such as the forum where over 50 students attended to ask Ms. Kenny and Mr. Cowan questions that they had. After speaking to the students about it afterward, they said that it was a good idea and that we should continue doing it. Recently I helped to set up for the class of 2019 photo on the field, which made me feel I was doing something to contribute to the grade.
One thing I learnt from Student Voice is the importance of communication and therefore time management. As there was a representative from every mentor class, discussions often became chaotic and disorganised. We had a group chat as well which people often spammed and therefore information was lost in all the messages. This made it very difficult to move on with plans as people were very fixated on their own ideas, not willing to compromise. For example, we were supposed to get payments for senior hoodies before the December break so that people could receive them on the first day back in January and wear them for the rest of the year. However, things got delayed due to our poor communication not only amongst ourselves but also between Student Voice and the grade. Now, the hoodies would only arrive sometime in February, which means that there is not a lot of time for grade 12s to wear it in school. If I were to give tips to the Student Voice groups for younger grades, I would advise them to start projects such as senior hoodies much earlier (possibly in Grade 11) as things will bound to be delayed.
