Wagga School Leaders Program Module 5
Module 5 was all about Who We Are as Citizens of Wagga Wagga.
On May 21st, students began the day at the Museum of the Riverina, with a Welcome to Country by Aunty Mary Atkinson and then Aunty Mary also assisted with a detailed interactive tour with the exhibit designer and Regional Museum Officer, Samantha Leah as well as the Museum Education & Public Programs Officer, Angus Cawdell-Smith. The Wiradyuri Collection at the Museum has been carefully co-curated with local elders to thoughtfully share some of the Wiradyuri history from across the region. The other collections give an overview of the history of Wagga and students were fascinated to see historical images and realize how much it has changed!
Given that it was a beautiful, sunny autumn day, the group then walked over to the Botanic Gardens and sat in the Tree Chapel for some quality conversations around vulnerability and taking time to be connected with each other.
Then we took a bus ride out to the Enirgi head office at Bomen. CEO Rebecca Hardy explained the battery recycling process to students and how they process over 60% of all used batteries from right around Australia right there in Bomen! Students then had the chance to meet with the Mentors for a second time, each time they meet students are matched with a different mentor so they can ask questions and get different advice from each mentor’s professional sectors and their personal experience. The day finished with students exploring communication with impact and finally the bus ride back to town.
“I believe the skill most developed throughout this program is my self-awareness of how I interact with others, and how I approach things mainly in the DISC personalities. I can shape my interactions based off of this knowledge in my day-to-day life, guess how others will act based off of their own personalities and be aware of why I act in certain different ways.” TM
“A big lesson [from the program so far] would be learning to stop thinking so much about myself developing egotistical beliefs, and instead looking outward at the world and how incredible others are and finding that uniqueness and specialty in others. This impact has been humungous, and because of this people are more open to me because they know I'm genuinely interested. It's also relieved a lot of pressure from self-expectations.” ZX
“In my second Mentor Session, Nathon spoke about the importance of humanity in leadership and remembering everyone is human. Each person prefers to be led or managed in a different way, and it is vital to gain knowledge to lead them in the best way for them. Also, I gained that in order to have a healthy, trusting relationship, becoming vulnerable to that person is vital and so they know they can also be vulnerable with you.” IE
