What did the students say?
The following represents quotes from a selection of Year 7 Keysborough SC students who participated in Youth Action and subsequent interviews (12 years old):
On what Youth Action is:
In Youth Action first we...we research or discover about movement and different types of movement and then we came up with lots of groups...then started to think about how we could change the community in the process of research and then in the end we presented our ideas and we hopefully made change.
My favourite part was actually getting the people dancing... like trying to get our group into a dance group and getting people to dance and yeah.
On deep Learning:
Before this I never really thought about it, it was just do that and undo it. Now I’m thinking more about everything that we’re doing and thinking of ways to do it better and stuff like that.
...with Youth Action you have to do more work, get information, interview people, present it... but in different classes, we hardly do that.
On knowledge about barriers to physical activity:
Yeah like weather conditions, lack of awareness, lack of participation, lack of money because sometimes it’s really expensive, they might be busy doing work studies or they might be taking care of doing something at home like doing chores or something like taking siblings, helping parents.
Some people like emotionally can’t, they don’t have friends, I mean socially they don’t...I thought usually people just go...but I found out that people need friends and they need to be like...feel safe and stuff like that.
Some parents don’t want kids to go and they just keep them in and don’t let them go anywhere.
On the process:
I’ve learnt how to do specific types of research and learnt about lots of different movement and types of ways we could present this.
On accomplishment / Empowerment:
it's like, you get to stand up for your own self, what we enjoy, we get to stand up for it and it's our own opinion, we can give it our own opinion and no one's going to deny it.
Because at the start I had an idea in my head and we were going through it, and we were just doing stuff, but then at the end I saw it all come together and it felt good that I did it, me and my team did it all ourselves without the teacher doing anything and we did that whole thing.
At first I was kind of nervous because I didn’t really know what was going on and then when we got more into the project I felt like yep, I want to make a change in this community so I helped pull myself along and I just tried to do my best.
Because we kind of stand up for our own self and it's for our school too, so that's why it's quite important.
On student centred learning:
Yeah because we thought of the idea so I was more committed to it, instead of if the teacher gave us an idea and then we had to do a project on that, it would just be an idea that the teacher had, not my idea.
I think people got motivated and they saw that we found an issue that was really an issue.
...not one teacher talks all the time like we get to do what we want to do. Yeah.
Normally the teacher tells us what to do. In youth action we decided what we were going to do, how we were going to do it and everything so we were doing it ourselves, most of it.
Doing it myself felt better than the teacher telling me what to do and I do it. It’s kind of boring that way so doing it myself was kind of better.
On representing the 'other':
Yeah, it’s quite important for us as part of projects because as us being part of the project we have to come up with the right ideas and stuff. But also the other people who answered our surveys and stuff, they’re equally as important because they also had a right to change the community.
On what they did:
Well like interviewing people. We interviewed a lot of people so like asking questions, different questions and then exhaustion from like walking around because of the interviews...confidence for the presentations. You had to use a lot of your time for the work – the project you’re doing.
In Youth Action first we...we research or discover about movement and different types of movement and then we came up with lots of groups...then started to think about how we could change the community in the process of research and then in the end we presented our ideas and we hopefully made change.
My favourite part was actually getting the people dancing... like trying to get our group into a dance group and getting people to dance and yeah.
On deep Learning:
Before this I never really thought about it, it was just do that and undo it. Now I’m thinking more about everything that we’re doing and thinking of ways to do it better and stuff like that.
...with Youth Action you have to do more work, get information, interview people, present it... but in different classes, we hardly do that.
On knowledge about barriers to physical activity:
Yeah like weather conditions, lack of awareness, lack of participation, lack of money because sometimes it’s really expensive, they might be busy doing work studies or they might be taking care of doing something at home like doing chores or something like taking siblings, helping parents.
Some people like emotionally can’t, they don’t have friends, I mean socially they don’t...I thought usually people just go...but I found out that people need friends and they need to be like...feel safe and stuff like that.
Some parents don’t want kids to go and they just keep them in and don’t let them go anywhere.
On the process:
I’ve learnt how to do specific types of research and learnt about lots of different movement and types of ways we could present this.
On accomplishment / Empowerment:
it's like, you get to stand up for your own self, what we enjoy, we get to stand up for it and it's our own opinion, we can give it our own opinion and no one's going to deny it.
Because at the start I had an idea in my head and we were going through it, and we were just doing stuff, but then at the end I saw it all come together and it felt good that I did it, me and my team did it all ourselves without the teacher doing anything and we did that whole thing.
At first I was kind of nervous because I didn’t really know what was going on and then when we got more into the project I felt like yep, I want to make a change in this community so I helped pull myself along and I just tried to do my best.
Because we kind of stand up for our own self and it's for our school too, so that's why it's quite important.
On student centred learning:
Yeah because we thought of the idea so I was more committed to it, instead of if the teacher gave us an idea and then we had to do a project on that, it would just be an idea that the teacher had, not my idea.
I think people got motivated and they saw that we found an issue that was really an issue.
...not one teacher talks all the time like we get to do what we want to do. Yeah.
Normally the teacher tells us what to do. In youth action we decided what we were going to do, how we were going to do it and everything so we were doing it ourselves, most of it.
Doing it myself felt better than the teacher telling me what to do and I do it. It’s kind of boring that way so doing it myself was kind of better.
On representing the 'other':
Yeah, it’s quite important for us as part of projects because as us being part of the project we have to come up with the right ideas and stuff. But also the other people who answered our surveys and stuff, they’re equally as important because they also had a right to change the community.
On what they did:
Well like interviewing people. We interviewed a lot of people so like asking questions, different questions and then exhaustion from like walking around because of the interviews...confidence for the presentations. You had to use a lot of your time for the work – the project you’re doing.