Hello, my name is Casey. I am a new year nine student at Nossal High School.

This is my report of a typical day at Nossal.

Today began in a typical, drowsy fashion. I dragged myself sluggishly out of bed and all but destroyed my alarm clock out of sheer frustration. However, I managed to pack my things and hop out of the door with plenty of time to spare. I caught a bus to the nearest train station and spent the remainder of the morning with my friends feeling curious about the day ahead.

Once I arrived at school I had the opportunity to say good morning to a few of the many other students that I have become acquainted with at Nossal. I have found that Nossal is an extremely friendly environment and that making friends is easy. I have found that I have many things in common with the students at Nossal and that they are all willing to help one another if a problem arises.

I then went on to collect my books and tutorial group commenced. Tutorial group is how we begin every day at Nossal. The time during tutorial group is allocated to marking the role, distributing and handing in forms, reading of the events that will occur during that day or week and providing students with the time to present any inquiries to their tutorial leaders or teacher.

I then went on to first period. Today I had health which is a compulsory subject that is combined with physical education. We often spend these classes with other tutorial groups creating a broader and more diverse learning environment. At first I had found these combined classes to be intimidating and strange, however as we continue into the first term at Nossal I have begun to take advantage of and enjoy these types of learning spaces. We have access to multiple teachers and we also get to spend time with a larger variety of people. I then had second period which was my chosen elective. There are a broad range of electives at Nossal each with a unique topic. Every elective has a certain amount of theory based studies and practice.

I specifically enjoy listening to the teachers when they explain theories behind each subject. My chosen elective was photography and we spent the period learning about the ISO, shutter speed and Aperture of the cameras. I then had recess which lasts for 20min. After recess I had my third period which was allocated to science. Science at Nossal so far has been extremely interesting compared to my previous schools. This particular science period was interrupted by my instrumental lesson.

My instrumental teacher at Nossal is very supportive and makes sure she combines an equal amount of theory and practice within our lessons. At Nossal it is an adult environment meaning that I am expected to catch up with the notes or studies that I miss whilst I attend my instrumental lessons. To catch up on the work in this lesson I was expected to approach my friends or teacher with any queries. My instrumental lessons change time each week so that no subject is effected too many weeks in a row. Following third period I had fourth period of English. We began the year with our ‘All About Me’ oral presentations and now we have moved on to our book studies. We are expected to have a broad range of reading as well as the books we will study over the year.

This will help us further on in VCE when we have to study different forms of literature. Following fourth period we have my favourite part of the school day. An entire hour is allocated to lunch leaving students with time to socialize with their friends, be they from their own or different classes, it gives them time to relax or they could even use this time to catch up on unfinished work or get a head start on homework. Finally I finished the school day with fifth period.

Today my fifth subject was Nossal time. Nossal time is a subject unique to Nossal. It is where the students explore the 5 minds of Nossal. It is also a time that we have begun to spend with our year eleven mentors creating new friendships between the year levels. During Nossal time we play a variety of games and orientation activities to help us get to know the people and the school.The day finishes at 3:20 an exception being Wednesday when school finishes early to make time for activities such as interschool sports practice or rehearsals. I find every day at Nossal to be very challenging and demanding.

Each day takes a lot of time and dedication but it is an amazing learning place for people who wish to do well. It is a very positive environment and I have found that adjusting to Nossal has been a lot simpler than I expected.