After exams, Year 10 students were asked if they wanted to apply for All Saints’s Peer Support program.

Now I am a Year 11, and I have just finished up the program. We’ve just had our last session. How time flies.

As part of Peer Support, the nine O’Connor Peer Support Leaders played fun games with the Year 8 students. Every Tuesday, the O’Connor Peer Support Leaders would meet to discuss the weeks activity. We took turns coordinating the activities and planning how they would run. The next Thursday, we would get to run that activity with the Year 8’s in Tutor Group. We played games such as Lava, the Continuum Game and Dodgeball, which were extremely enjoyable.

The thing about Peer Support however is that those games teach valuable life skills and messages, as well as being fun. The concepts we based our games on are based around the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but also taught skills like avoiding procrastination, what people’s values were, and how it felt to be part of the minority in a group. These are all lessons I was taught when I was in Year 8, being taught by the Class of 2020. Now we are that Year 11 cohort, we could spread those messages to those Year 8’s.

I’ve made some great friendships in the Year 8 cohort, which I hope will keep going through this year and beyond. I would like to say thank you to Ms Lees and Ms Eddington for putting together an amazing program and giving me this opportunity to make a difference. To the other Peer Support Leaders of 2022, you were amazing to work with. Thank you for every happy memory.