Revisit

On Friday I went back to AUT with Patrick for a meeting with the AUT staff and the Minister of Youth Affairs Nanaia Mahuta. Several other schools participating in the 'Prefects that Peek' programme attended, including Onehunga High, Papatoetoe, Northcote and Tamaki. Unfortunately the meeting wasn't at such a good time as during that afternoon our prefects were making a presentation at junior assembly, I had to organise a video camera for the sports co-ordinator to bring to the lawn bowls tournament, and we still had to sift through all the nomination forms we received for Junior Student Committee (which was substantial!). I had to step out of my comfort zone and rely on others to do the jobs for me which is a bit difficult for me because sometimes I feel like I need to do things in order to get them right! I'm working on that though! I heard that everything went well which should be unexpected as we have very competent prefects!

To start off the AUT meeting we had a powhiri, in which we had to sing a song we learnt in under five minutes. After the very long powhiri Ms Mahuta went along and did that little nose touching thing with each of us. We then had something to eat in the cafeteria room. They had set up a projector showing photos of prefects from various schools who participated. There was even Heather with some drunk looking guy on the street, Ellyce with...I think a dog, and Sarena holding her phone! It was a bit unsurprising that whenever someone asked us which school we were from and we said Rutherford College, they would have no idea where we were, but they did go on to ask

"Oh is that somewhere in North Shore?"

So I guess we can take that as a compliment!

We got round together to discuss our experiences at the AUT camp and what we had learnt. Rebecca the AUT lady asked Patrick how well he knew the other prefects before the camp. He said he probably knew only about three really well and that was it. When she asked whether camp helped him get to know others, he replied

"Well after that night everyone definitely got to know each other better!"

What's funny is that a little while later some girl from another school asked if we were an all boys school! Now that would be wrong!

Each of our schools then had to tell the others what we had planned to do and what we had achieved so far. Most schools seemed to have arranged their prefects into narrow groups such as year 13 camp/ball, or student radio - only focusing on one thing, whereas our prefects were divided into groups with a broader focus such as environment and student welfare. It felt better knowing the other schools were in a similar or worse situation with regards to school spirit/pride! It sounded as though our prefects group had made more progress than all the other schools though, and Rebecca seemed really impressed with us, coming up to us afterwards saying

"Your business plans are the ****!"

She wants to arrange a meeting with our prefects group again sometime and bring along some specialists to help us out, which means this week all our groups will have to get together and start getting their plans off the ground. Looks like it's going to be another hectic week!