On Friday, 20 April 2018, our Interfaith Ambassadors from Years 9 and 10 attended an interfaith event, organised and hosted by Thomastown Secondary College. Middle Years student Annam Rashid from Year 9G1 has written the following account of her participation in this excursion:
"There was an excursion held for the interfaith students at Thomastown Secondary College. On this excursion, we were accompanied by Ms Rahat. We were also joined by students from St. Monica’s College in Epping. The excursion was held for the interfaith students to get to know each other.
To do so they held activities in which students from all three schools were split into groups. We had to communicate with the other students during these activities which helped us create a bond. For each activity we were put with different people.
We started the day with an intro to the values of Thomastown Secondary College, followed by an ice breaker program. In this, we had to find people whose name started with the same letter as our’s and learn their name and ambition as well as ask each other questions about the program. We had to later on share the info about one another with the other students. This helped us learn more about some of the people we will be working with.
Then, we played giant volleyball in which we had to work together. This helped us build our teamwork skills which is beneficial for us and will help us in future projects. Afterwards, we had recess in which we grabbed a snack. We also got to see the school as we had a tour lead by some of our newly formed friends.
We then came back and had the Dialogue Program in which we were once again split up. In this program we were given three questions we had to answer:
1.What is community to you?
2.One thing in your community you are proud of
3.One thing you would change.
After answering those questions, we had to answer some of the response questions asked by our group members and write them down to share later on in the discussion. After doing so we were given another question: " Which value means a lot to you?" We had to do the same with this question that we did with the other three questions.
Lastly, we had lunch during which we had to come back as school ended early for us. Unfortunately, we couldn’t participate in all the activities, but we still learned a lot about and from the other students.
This excursion was a little surprising for some of us as we did not expect this much acceptance from the students from the other two schools. Since it was just five Muslim girls, we didn’t expect them to treat us as kindly as they did. We felt included, had a great time and hope that we can get along with the other students in the future like we did on this excursion.
Written by Annam Rashid (Year 9G1)