This year I have had the privilege of being a part of Kowhai house’s 1VOC class and I’ve enjoyed every minute. In this subject, we focus on project based learning and have been on the road to completing 5 projects this year.

The projects we’ve finished so far consist of a chicken coop, dog kennels, garden beds and right now we are creating family sized picnic tables. One of my personal favourites has got to be the dog kennels because it was super fun letting our creative minds take over, we could choose any design we liked and we made it our own and donated them to the BOI animal rescue.

In my opinion, doing these projects make for a very fun, enjoyable class and I always want to come back. However, building isn’t the only thing we do, we’ve also had the amazing opportunity to go up to the Kaikohe berry farms to gain work experience every Friday. I think that while building is fun, the best part about Vocation is creating bonds with your classmates throughout the projects we make. At the berry farm we started off picking up leaves to clean out the tunnels and even though it sounds boring, it was actually really fun because everyone jumped in the leaf piles and hung out with their friends.

We also began laying out the coconut husk and now we’re starting to plant the strawberries. Another one of the best parts of working at the berry farm is getting pizza at the end of every day as a reward. Being in vocation opens up more opportunities for career pathways and I think that this year, I’ve strengthened my bonds and came out of my comfort zone a lot more through our experiences being 1VOC.

Kia Ora,

My name is Ayesha and I am in the Bay of Islands college 11w Vocation class. Vocation is a class where you do loads of cool things such as building things for ourselves and other people.

Last year my class and I decided to build a chicken coop for our school chickens, that was our first ever project and this year we upgraded even more by building dog kennels to donate to the BOI Animal Rescue. It took us a few periods to complete them but eventually we managed to build 4 dog houses. We then gave them to the BOI animal rescue and hoped they’d make good, safe homes for dogs.

Throughout Wednesday, I did various activities such as creating a vision board, printing out photos and thinking about the layout. To start off the day we left school around 9am and headed down to the health trust in a van, when we got there, we signed in at the front and went to our room. In the room where we do all our work there was a great amount of snacks, coffee and hot chocolate. The first thing we did was write in our journals, then we got to crafting our vision boards. We printed out pictures of our personal goals, quotes and any other photos we wanted to add. I personally added photos of me and the people I love. For lunch we were cooked a delicious meal of steak stir-fry with our choice of rice or noodles, we did a little more work on our vision boards and then crafted some mothers day cards, wrote in our journals again, videoed ourselves answering the question “What stops you from opening up to adults” and headed back up to school. All in all I enjoyed my day tremendously and I can’t wait until next week.

What surprised me was that the chickens weren’t very wary of us humans. I thought they’d be sort of scared of us because we’re so much bigger than them and I know I’d be a little bit uncomfortable being surrounded by things 10 times my size. They didn’t seem to be too worried about us because whenever we were in the coop they didn’t try to run away, they kind of just chilled wherever we were. Also they didn’t flinch when I touched one. Learning this didn’t just change my view on chickens it also changed my view on other animals and how us as people think we know what to expect from an animal when really we only know the beginning of it.

In the holiday, one of my best friends Marley asked me if I wanted to go with her and her family to adventure forest, there was no way I was turning down that opportunity so I said of course I would. Before we went to Adventure Forest we stopped at Whangarei falls to have lunch and look at the waterfall, Then we left to go to the forest. When we arrived I got very confused at first because we had to figure out how to clip everything onto the obstacles and it was kind of intricate but after awhile we figured it out and were on our way.

There are multiple different levels of obstacle courses so we started at the 3rd or 4th one up and it was easy, there was a double zipline at the end of one so we raced down and I won. We then went up higher and the courses got harder and harder the higer the levels went. We eventually decided to just skip the last few and go straight to the top level which was “Acrobat”, never again. That course was so hard!! I felt like I was going to die because it was so hard to stay balanced even though I knew that I couldn’t fall since I was clipped onto the rope thing, it was honestly so much fun though and I would love to go again.

After that, we went back to Marleys place and got ready to walk down to the beach, when we got there the sky was so pretty with the sun setting and we took alot of photos together. We also decided to try go into the water knee deep and it was freezing but so refreshing, I could’ve stayed there for ages just relaxing, not a care in the world.

When we got back to her place the real fun began, we ate dinner and did facemasks and then just sung karaoke really really loudly (we kind of sounded like dying cats though.) At one point even Marleys’ mum Lee decided to join us in karaoke and that was super fun. After we calmed down a little we did a thing where we got Marleys’ TV from her shelf and put it on the ground and put loads of blankets and pillows down in front of it, cooked some popcorn, and watched horror movies together.

Kia ora, we have been setting goals to prepare us for Year 10. Below are my goals:

1. One piece of advice for myself this year is that I should study more next time so I get higher results.  
2. One thing I was proud of from last term is that I actually managed to pass my math test with a Merit 🙂
3. My main focus for the next three weeks is to grow my knowledge a bit more so that even under pressure I can answer questions with ease.  
4. When I need help I know to ask my friends and if they don’t know the answer then go to Whaea Narelle
5. At the end of this term, I want to be able to say that I achieved my goal of getting a higher score than expected on my test, and to know things off by heart under pressure.
6. These are my action steps to help me get there

1) Practice times tables.

2) Do IXL.

3) Put my mind to it.