(Lawyers Encouraging and Assisting Promising Students)

During 2008, 16 Year 9 students were involved in the LEAPS program. This is a mentoring program. Students were paired with a lawyer from Thompson Playford law firm or the Attorney General’s Department.

We travelled to the city on ten occasions throughout the year to meet with our mentor. The valuable topics that we talked about included: cyber bullying; our goals in life and school; current events; problem solving and conflict resolution; study habits; and how to solve a situation and things happening ordinarily in each of ours lives.arah High School built a strong relationship with their mentor, sharing personal issues going on during their day to day lives. Some students got to know the other “mentees” in their year better and found out that they had a lot in common.

The LEAPS program took time out of our studies at school, it was not all fun and games, we had catch up on work but while our fellow students were at school we enjoyed a totally complimentary and delicious lunch and learnt more then we could think of.

Most importantly we learnt who we wanted to be in life and how we were going to get there. With the strength and encouragement from our mentors we learnt that we were a whole different person underneath and some of the students have brought it out at school and home and around their friends.

On the 24th of November our mentors came to school for our LEAPS graduation evening. Our families, friends and teachers were there to see us graduate from this program. Nickie played the piano, Daniela and Zahra sang, and we all had to make a speech about the program and our mentors. Our mentors also had to speak and they said some really lovely things about us. Some even cried!

LEAPS was a great program and we all achieved a lot from being involved. It will run again next year for Year 9 students.

Vanessa Williams, head teacher welfare