The Duke of Edinburgh's Award explained, our winning student poets, and a song of hope

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Natalie Moutafis:         

Hi everyone, and welcome back to isPodcast, ISV's show for schools and the wider community. I'm Natalie Moutafis.

On today's episode, Mike Broadstock learns how the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Program empowers young people, with Johanna Leitch and how earning the program's bronze, silver and gold awards helped Kardinia International College Captain Lillian Henderson find a real sense of community. But first, Shane Green talks with ISV chief executive, Michelle Green, about the poems that picked up the awards at this year's Student Poetry Competition.

Shane Green:

Michelle, welcome back to isPodcast.

Michelle Green:

Thank you, Shane.

Shane Green:

Michelle, this is always a very exciting time of year at Independent Schools Victoria.

Michelle Green:

It's wonderful because we are just coming out of winter, which is room for celebration in itself. But it's the annual poetry competition so it gives us the opportunity to look forward and ahead and enjoy what it is that our poets have written and said.

Shane Green:

Now we've just sent out the emails alerting the winners of their success. So it's going to be a great week ahead and coming weeks as well, isn't it?

Michelle Green:

It'll be wonderful. And we had so many entries this year, 500 entries, without counting about a hundred thousand words, the foundation to year 12 students. It was very exciting.

Shane Green:

Michelle, of course, it's cross sectoral as well, isn't it?

Michelle Green:

It is. And we thank all of the students, all of the parents and the teachers, everyone who took part. Because it's quite obvious that this is something that is beyond what schooling sector you are in. It's people are interested in poetry and words. And that's what we want to hear.

Shane Green:

Now watching the judges at work, it's been quite impressive, hasn't it?

Michelle Green:

It certainly has. And I must admit, I didn't realise how many touchpoints with each poem our judges had. So many of the poems were read about 10 times. Some of them were read out loud with a few people listening. Some of them were just read. And then there was quite a lot of discussion around the themes, around the use of words, around how evocative the poetry was. So I was really happy to see that. Anything that lingered in the judge's mind, anything that they really remembered, or that really resonated with them, they pulled it aside. And then they had a look at those and thought about what it was that would capture the imagination of anyone who listened to the poem.

Shane Green:

It was really clear that the competition iand poetry in general has indeed captured the imagination of students and teachers.

Michelle Green:

Yes. And you don't often think that in today's world that something like poetry can take people beyond themselves. And that's what we found. People were very excited about putting their entries in, about competition between schools, between groups of students within schools. So it was quite interesting for us, something as quiet as poetry, which became something that was beyond the individuals that were writing and reading it.

Shane Green:

Now, there was a change in the competition this year, Michelle.

Michelle Green:

Ah, yes, my personal favourite. We went to performance poetry. We've seen the power of performance poetry in the presidential inauguration, but also in Australia. And when people write and then perform, it brings together the power of the written word and the spoken word. And voice is very, very important. So it was really wonderful to see the performance poetry. And what was great was that the category was embraced by students. I can remember when I was a child, if anyone ever asked me to read a poem, I would be very embarrassed about my words, but this was beyond that. This was not declaiming. This was becoming part of the words as written. It was lovely to see.

Shane Green:

And it was also clear that from the performance poems, many of them embraced the whole idea, the whole genre. It was different from a written poem, wasn't it?

Michelle Green:

It certainly was. And it was lovely to see how people dressed like their poem. So one girl who wrote about Spring, who dressed...it was a beautiful dress with spring flowers and sat where there were some flowers. But there was a hilarious moment in one of the poems where someone was talking about how they would love to have a cat or a dog and quite unscripted the family cat walked behind the performance poet. So that cat will go down in history as having the best timing ever.

Shane Green:

That's great. And of course, we had a theme again this year and belonging was the chosen theme. Why do you think that was a particularly important theme for this time?

Michelle Green:

Students are quite often exposed to ideas that there are various people in the world who either belong or don't belong. We either look a certain way. We act a certain way. We know that we live in a multicultural society, but we know that students feel that society is not as multicultural or is not as embraced in the way that we would like. So belonging has so many different aspects, whether you belong in the classroom, whether you belong with your peer group, whether you belong with yourself or with your family. And I think we saw all of these themes come through the poetry. It's more important than ever for us to belong. There have been so many challenges in the past few years. There's so much of a concern about the mental health of our parents, of our students. We need to know that people can have a voice and a voice about belonging is very powerful.

Shane Green:

One of the things that came through was the pain of not belonging and the angst that caused.

Michelle Green:

Absolutely. And that obviously resonated with many of our poets. The idea that people are part of something bigger than themselves is a powerful one. But it's also the idea that poetry gives you a voice that you may not otherwise have. Many of our poets may not go to their teachers and say, "I'm hurting. I feel like I don't belong here. I feel that I'm having to change my personality to fit in with my group." But in a poem, it will come out quite naturally. And it does give a voice to people who feel that maybe something is wrong with them when actually it's not something wrong with them at all.

Shane Green:

Do you think the experience of the past two years has really brought that into sharper focus for people being separated from their tribes or not being able to make those in person connections?

Michelle Green:

I think that's right. And quite often when we see people on a screen, we see the perfect. We don't see the imperfect. When we are together, we see people as they are and we can respond to them as they are. But we've been separated. We've been just seeing what is perfect quite often and feeling that we are not perfect. It does resonate. I can feel that some of this lack of connection is being felt, not just by people like me who sit at a desk and talk to principals and teachers but is being felt by everyone in society.

Shane Green:

We talked about some of the pain that came through in some of the poems, but at the same time, there were some really positive messages, weren't there, when it came to the theme of belonging?

Michelle Green:

Yes, there were some really optimistic messages. Messages about coming to me, being with me, walking my journey. And it was lovely to see that it is very moving and quite disturbing when you read a poem or you listen to a poem where people are feeling separated from each other. But quite often in those poems, there was a rounding up where the poet said, "This is who I am. And because this is who I am, this is where I will go." So quite optimistic. So people who'd gone from an introduction, talked about the depths, if you like, of their feeling, and then said, "And this is how I will respond." Which is just wonderful to see. And all poets throughout history have done this. So it's great to know that our young poets are carrying on the tradition.

Shane Green:

One of the other things, Michelle, is as we're discussing this, it's also really clear that our poets have been very brave in sharing some very personal thoughts and feelings.

Michelle Green:

Indeed. And I'm wondering how the communities in the schools, when they hear these poems, will respond, what it will mean to them. One of the very interesting things to me was to see the diversity, the cultural diversity of the poets, to see that they were responding to what maybe their grandmother had said to them and responding to what their teacher had said, two very different cultures. And between those two cultures, working their own path.

Shane Green:

Michelle, it's always hard to name a favourite, but I know there are a number of poems that really touched and moved you. There was one in particular called Whitewashed by Siri Liu from year 10 at Carey Baptist Grammar.

Michelle Green:

Yes, it talking about what it means to try to pretend to be the same or to be the same. And one of their lines was, "When you call me whitewashed, is that your secret apology?" And you wonder just what was behind that. You wonder what gives rise to that. And then later on, "Do you mean for me to strip off my yellow tone skin and hang it off to dry when I step into the bath, scrub my face of all ethnic features?" These are things that we all think about, but we don't think about so deeply. So that poem, I found very, very moving.

It made me realise that there were other people who are growing up in the way that I grew up. A line in the poem, "Do not forget who you are." I grew up in a migrant family and my ancestors were people that I was proud of, but who would not be people that people in Australia would recognise. And this poem brings all of that into being so it's very moving to read. But it also goes beyond that. It talks about what is next, right? "You grew up at home. I grew up homesick." Just that line stays with you at the end of the poem. It's very moving.

Shane Green:

Incredibly powerful, isn't it?

Michelle Green:

Yes.

Shane Green:

You can find all the winning entries and the list of honourable mentions on the Arts Learning festival website, arts learning festival.com.au. Michelle, thanks for joining us on isPodcast.

Natalie Moutafis:

The Duke of Edinburgh Award is an international program for young people that helps them find their passion and place in the world. It's offered in 130 countries and over the last 60 years or so, more than three quarters of a million Australian students have taken part. Mike Broadstock spoke with Johanna Leitch from the awards Australian branch and Lillian Henderson who undertook the program at Kardinia International College about how schools and students can take part.

Michael Broadstock:

Welcome to isPodcast, Johanna.

Johanna Leitch:

Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Michael Broadstock:

For listeners who haven't heard about it, what is the Duke of Edinburgh's award and how does it work?

Johanna Leitch:

So the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award is a global leading non-formal education and youth development program. And it empowers young people between the ages of 14 and 25 to explore their full potential, regardless of their location or circumstance. It is an internationally recognised framework and it's non-competitive so each young person chooses their own journey. And there are three levels, bronze, silver and gold. And in each level, there's four sections. In each section, participants choose their own activity.

So the first section is the voluntary service activity, and that's about encouraging young people to volunteer their time and understand the benefits of voluntary service to their community. Then there's the physical recreation section, which encourages young people to participate in sport and other physical recreations for the improvement of health and fitness. Then there's the skills section, which encourages the development of personal interests and practical social skills.

And then there's the adventurous journey component, which is about encouraging a sense of adventure whilst undertaking a team journey or expedition. So they will plan, train for and undertake a journey with a defined purpose in an unfamiliar environment. And that's probably the most well known section of the award because that's the part of their journey where typically young people might go on a camp or a hike and they tend to take a lot of photos and want to share about those experiences and activities.

 And so basically you have these four activity sections and participants will choose an activity for each of those sections. And then they do that for a required amount of time. So for bronze, it's three months per activity. It must be regular activity over a period of time. So one hour a week or two hours a fortnight. It's not like you can conduct all of your voluntary service over a weekend, for example. It's about committing and having a regular practice.

Then you record your activity and write reflections. So it's also about setting goals and working towards those goals and then completing them. And it's not necessarily about achieving in competition to others. It's really about your own journey. And they have an award leader who mentors them through the program and signs off that they've completed their activities and completed their requirements. And then they have an assessor for each activity who is an expert on that particular activity. And in that way, you sort of involve more than one mentor who participants can rely on to help them through that whole process, which gives them that skill set of learning how to reach out for mentors and developing those kind of relationships as well.

So that's kind of the full spectrum helping to educate the whole person because you can really choose any activity as long as it meets the requirements. What it does for a lot of schools is provides a structure and in external international recognition for activities and programs that schools might already be running because it provides that tight framework around ensuring that young people commit to an activity over a long period of time and that they are able to set a goal around that and sort of work towards something. And then at the end they get recognised for it.

Michael Broadstock:

Why should young people do the program? What are the positives for them?

Johanna Leitch:

First of all, young people really enjoy doing the program and that is the big part of it. But the other part is that international recognition at the end, which can help motivate them to do activities or to stick out activities that they might not otherwise have had besides just that motivation to learn something new or try something new or to stick out something or to sort feel rewarded and recognised at the end of the program. There's also a lot of research and statistics that we have that shows how the award improves a young person's employability, improves educational attainment, helps them develop life skills like teamwork, resilience, confidence, perseverance, time management. It's about developing lifelong activity habits. So we have lots of evidence to show that young people who participate in the award go on to continue in those activities long after the award has finished, which is really great.

And that it just really gets them out of their comfort zone, broadens their horizons. And the other thing that really resonates with young people is it helps them to develop a love of nature and the outdoors and an appreciation and conservation for the environment. So lots of young people do use their award, not only to get out in nature with the adventurous journey section, but also to care for the environment. And then lastly, the other thing that we really saw through COVID was how much it assisted young people with their wellbeing. More than 70 per cent of young people saying that it assisted with their mental health and wellbeing during COVID because it gave them something to do to look forward to, to sort focus on. It helped them to feel like their life was progressing when other things weren't progressing. So yeah, that's also been really important.

Michael Broadstock:

With regards to schools, how do they get involved and what are the challenges in running the program?

Johanna Leitch:

The way that a school gets involved is that they sign a licence to deliver the award. So what we provide is training for the teachers to become award leaders, which helps them to move from being a teacher, to being a mentor for young people. We also provide obviously the framework, the online recording portal. So the online record book, which is where the young people and the award leaders interact. The young people are recording their progress and then the award leader can see that and check off the things that they're doing and all of that kind of stuff. But we also provide a lot of mapping and account management supports. One of the challenges obviously with running programs and activities in schools is first of all, finding time in the busy curriculum. One of the great things about the award, because it is so flexible, you can map it directly to the curriculum. Every exploring curriculum maps to it.

What our organisation will do is we'll come in and we'll have a meeting and we'll help you map that out. So we'll look at the activities that young people can do in schools that can help strengthen the learning around the curriculum. The other challenge is obviously with the staffing, resourcing budgets, particularly for the outdoor ed component. But I think one of the misconceptions that people have with the adventurous journey is that it has to be this going on a camp and do this really difficult hike. And whilst lots of young people get so much out of outdoor education and whilst it is an integral part of many schools' offerings, the adventurous journey is really about encouraging a sense of adventure whilst undertaking a team journey or expedition. It doesn't have to be a really difficult hike. They just have to undertake a journey with a defined purpose in an unfamiliar environment.

So we have had young people with disability who have chosen to undertake that sense of adventure by using public transport for the first time. We have people who come from regional areas who decide to come to the city as their adventurous journey. So there's lots of ways to work around that adventurous journey and our organisation can help with that, to help map that out to what works for your school and what will be meaningful for your participants.

And we can also help navigate how to set it up within the budget constraints or staffing constraints. If it's just one to two hours a week maybe for one of your current teachers, that's totally doable, we can work that in. And then as the program grows, we can look at ways to assist you in that. So there's lots of ways in which we can help solve some of these challenges for schools. What's great about the award is it's super flexible and our organisation, we do all the mapping. We assist you in all of that. We provide all the training and then we provide ongoing training support, help with information sessions, connect you with activity partners, all sorts of things.

Michael Broadstock:

The Duke of Edinburgh International Award also has a young award leader program where participants help their award leader, mentor other young people as part of their voluntary service or skills activity requirements. Kardinia International College student, Lillian Henderson, shared what attracted her to the program.

Lillian Henderson:

So I found out about it through school and just through school's promotion of it and stories of older students that had done it, which sounded really fun. I think also there were a lot of things that I had wanted to do, and I think the flexibility of the award, how people can choose what activities they do enabled me to fully explore the things that I wanted to do.

Michael Broadstock:

What was it like doing the program? Did take a lot of time? Did you do it in school hours, out of school hours?

Lillian Henderson:

Outside of school hours. A few hours a week that you would dedicate to something you're interested in. So it didn't really feel like a massive time commitment. It more just felt like you were adding a little bit of variety to your life and doing things that you were interested in. Doing the program you get so involved in all these different communities. It makes life a bit more interesting, but that sums it up.

Michael Broadstock:

So, Johanna talked about how you can choose your own areas and your own adventurous journey. Can you talk a bit about what your choices were and what your adventure was like?

Lillian Henderson:

Yeah. So I changed things up a bit because I did all three levels. So I did guitar and cooking as skills. And I did rowing as my physical recreation and an environmental group through school as part of my community service and further...adventurous journeys. We went to the surf coast camps along there for the first few levels. And then in gold, we did a week down the Glenelg River in canoes. And that was one of the most fun weeks of my life. It was a really, really great experience.

Michael Broadstock:

Why?

Lillian Henderson:

Well, I didn't know anyone that I went on the camp with beforehand. I knew them, but I didn't know them closely, more just knew of them. And it was like everyone there was really amazing people. And I felt like I wouldn't have met them or been able to form the friendships with them in any other environment. It was just a really, really like getting away from the other parts of your life. And just put into this completely different place, experiencing new things with new people, and yeah, real sense of community.

Michael Broadstock:

What did you learn about yourself doing the award? Has it helped prepare you for life after school?

Lillian Henderson:

Well, I haven't experienced life after school yet. I haven't graduated. But just in part-time employment, I think the award improves employability for a reason because the award genuinely develops your social interaction skills and adapting to new environments, I would say as well, and leadership skills as well. So in part-time employment, it's really useful for those reasons.

Michael Broadstock:

You were in the young award leaders program. How have you encouraged other people to take part in the program? What have you told them?

Lillian Henderson:

Promoting the camps is a big part of it because I think that's the aspect of the Duke of Edinburgh award that most people might not have an opportunity to do elsewhere. And it is really fun and yeah, something that you gain a lot from.

Michael Broadstock:

And the best part of it personally for you?

Lillian Henderson:

Oh, I can't pick one. Yeah. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I'd say community in every sense of it because then that sort of sums up a lot of it. The supportive community in...general, but then each community that you get to go into for each activity that you do and then the community on camp and the new friendships. Yeah, yeah. A really holistic experience.

Michael Broadstock:

Sounds great. We'll put links to the Duke of Edinburgh website in our show notes. Thanks very much for joining us, Lillian and Johanna.

Lillian Henderson:

Thank you very much.

Johanna Leitch:

Thanks, Mike.

Natalie Moutafis:

We're leaving you with Year 7 Harkaway Hills College student Grace Sudjuno's, Song of Hope. The celebration of the joy of listening to rain, strumming the rooftops won Grace her second poetry competition prize, this time in the performance category.

Grace Sudjuno:

Hi. My name is Grace Sudjuno and I'm in Year 7 from Harkaway Hills College. Today I will be reciting my poem, Song of Hope. I hope you enjoy it.

Song of Hope

I can finally see pearls of rain descending from the Welkin’s rim, strumming the rooftop, plinking off puddles, like the smooth clinking of champagne flutes.

Teardrops fall from the sky in a clapping curtain of rain.

Tiny droplets tap the leaves, applauding the great triumph I’ve surpassed.

The rain waltzes across the heavens, humming a delightful song of praise.

Dressed in a silky gown, ripples of light dance around her as her hem, a shroud of knits, with light wispy prints, enfolds my face.

Ripples trickle into crevices and cracks, and whispers fill the sky, lingering on the nuzzling breeze.

A soft harmonic drumming, vibrantly alive, cascading in a rhythmic beat.

I can finally see the rain’s silent song, no longer an exile in a veiled world, to endure the desolate darkness with a heart as heavy as stone.

I can finally see pebbles of falling rain clear and crystalline, twinkling a pearly glow, glistening like luminous moonlight.

Golden cirrus rays illuminate the sky, like an intricate tapestry, fashioned from finest droplets, threaded by the weaver’s delicate hands.

If splendour is God’s signature, then rain is his finest flourish.

Thankyou.

Natalie Moutafis:

isPodcast is brought to you by Independent Schools Victoria. It's produced and recorded by Duncan MacLean and presented by Michael Broadstock, Shane Green, and me, Natalie Moutafis. Our podcast theme was composed and performed by Duncan. And there are transcripts of our show with links to what we've discussed at podcast.iseducation.com.au