A major assignment for Year 8 Veritas is the Advocacy Presentation.

This involves every Year 8 student working in a group of 3 to collaborate and create a ‘Justice and Advocacy Presentation’ to be presented in front of family and friends.

This project is a strong contributor to the growth journey of a boy at Aquinas College because:

• it allows boys to learn about Justice Issues in the world,
• boys learn about and experience ‘advocacy’,
• students get to demonstrate learning in front of peers & family,
• public speaking and presentation skills are developed in students,
• it builds an even more informed and compassionate Aquinas College community.

When I was given the task I felt calm and collected but as time went on everything felt surreal, and when I heard that my group was going second my group started to get really nervous and I tried to calm my group down. One of the positive things I took from this presentation was the fact that a learnt to use speaking skills in front of a live audience and even our parents and siblings. I think my presentation was a ride of emotions because I was super nervous at the start but as soon as we finished our presentation, I felt so relieved and happy.

• James Hunt - 8BRE

I was annoyed when I was told to make a presentation for my family and friends. To me, it was just another thing that was piled onto my to-do list that was forever expanding. I was already doing 2 other presentations, and this just wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to do. Also, I wasn’t Catholic so the whole bit about the “Catholic Lens” thing annoyed me. Though after the presentation was finished, I was proud of myself. I had accomplished something amazing. I had stood up in front of a whole room of strangers, and I told them that they had to do something to help this cause. And it was amazing. Something that I took away from the presentations is to not worry about any mistakes you made. The audience doesn’t know what your presentation was meant to be like so just go with the presentation and continue with it like nothing happened. For example, during a presentation about plastic and chemical pollution in the oceans, the presenter asked for anyone to do a quiz. I volunteered and was asked, “What are the planets in the solar system?” I said them all and then they asked me a second question. The question was “What are the 7 oceans?”. I was so close to getting it right that it surprised the presenter. He was flustered and talked about how close I was to getting it right. After the presentation was finished, the presenter came up to me and said that he forgot to say his point about how I knew all the planets in our solar system and yet I didn’t know the oceans on our own planet. This shocked me as he was so calm during that moment. That was when I realised that I could say anything in a presentation and the audience wouldn’t know that this isn’t what was meant to be said. If there is one thing, I could say to the year sevens that are going to do this next year it would be to have fun and to relax. This is something that is going to be awesome.

• Harry West – 8EDW

When we were told we had to do an Advocacy Presentation in front of parents as well as students my heart dropped, I really did not want to do this. And on the morning of the presentations, it didn’t help that one of our group members was sick. I felt very nervous as the first group to present had just done an almost perfect 19-minute speech and when I got up for our turn, which just happened to be last, my hands were shaking. But it turned out to not be that bad especially when we had a decent amount of time to work on this and could take our missing group member’s palm cards and split them between ourselves. When our presentation was over, I felt extremely relieved but couldn’t help but think I could have done better. However, I felt much better when we went back to the year seven quad, and I could talk to the other boys and make myself feel better by learning that they had made mistakes as well.

• Harrison Heal – 8TRW

The justice and advocacy speech night was a great night as the students got to advocate to the parents about a topic that they cared about. It was a great chance to just presenting in front of teachers and classmates and was a good opportunity for the parents to see how their kids actually went in school and to see if they listened and paid attention in class or if they just spent the lessons playing games and not preparing. Personally, I felt quite nervous at first because I was just told that I had to advocate for a problem in the world in front of a bunch of parents and family members of other students but later got excited and found that it was my time to show my family and other families that I was a hard-working student. After my presentation, I felt very proud of myself because I had just told a speech in front of a bunch of people and went quite well and all my hard work paid off. Overall, I think that the justice and advocacy night was amazing as the students got to show their hard work to their families, families met other families and got to know each other, and everybody got to pray with each other and celebrate this wonderful night.

• William Hatton – 8TRE
  

When I first found out about the Justice and advocacy presentation, I wasn’t exactly excited… feelings of nerves rushed through me as all I could think about was - how many parents, children or people will be there? What if I stuff up? Well, the night came sooner than you could say Justice and Advocacy Presentation.

Within hours of the night starting, it was finished, and all those feelings of worry and nerves had disappeared, now only relief and the feeling of pride, the adrenaline rush? Gone. We had a chance to experience public speaking in front of a large crowd and many peers. Confidence will fill us next time we have a speech - knowing that if we can do it in front of a large crowd of strangers, what’s a speech at school?

This experience will live with us for the rest of our lives and fills many of us with great confidence for years to come with public speaking. Great experience.

• Alex Richardson – 8EDE