On Thursday 11th of August 2018, 11 Year 9 students took the train to Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre to attend ‘In Your Head’, a youth mental health forum presented by Zero2Hero. The event offered many good opportunities and activities, which was a great experience to get out of our comfort zones. When we arrived at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, we signed in and received goodie bags, which had some exciting things in them such as stress balls and colouring in pages. We then went into the theatre and listened to our first two keynote speakers. Paris Mitchell was our first speaker and he spoke to us about how he grew up and the difficult experiences he went through. Our second speaker, Ashleigh Nelson, a famous Hockeyroo player, spoke to us about her sporting and Olympic experiences and what she went through to get to where she is today.
After listening to these motivational speakers, we participated in three breakout sessions. These sessions involved many activities such as urban dance and yoga, as well as many speeches such as exam stress and mindfulness strategies. These activities really helped us express ourselves and find new strategies on how to de-stress but most importantly, they taught us that no matter what you do, you should always be yourself.
After we completed our breakout sessions, we listened to our final speaker, Akram Azimi who spoke to us about his difficult time moving to Australia from overseas and his transition into this new life in somewhere that was completely new to him. Once Akram finished his speech, we had ‘question time’ where we were allowed to ask any final questions that we had and we could express our opinions on what we thought of the day and whether or not we want to attend the conference again next year.
Attending this convention was such a great experience and we learnt so much. We would like to thank Mr Schlueter and Miss Kerins for organising this event. We had so much fun and we would definitely attend this convention again next year if we get the chance.
Written by Trinity Adair and Taleisa Kuipers, Year 9 Students