A little review: the AMEP Youth Class at NSF 

Our official reporter for NSF, Sanja, shares more about her experiences in the AMEP Youth Class at Liverpool College. Enrolling in the Youth Class has resulted in life-long friendships for Sanja, as well as a sense of belonging in a community with shared experience and understanding. Here is more about her story.

Sanja Nikolic, official reporter for Navitas Skilled Futures

When I joined Navitas in October 2023, I was told that besides regular classes from Monday to Wednesday I could also attend the Youth Class on Thursdays. At first, I was not sure about the concept of the class, it sounded too good to be true! They told me that we would visit a lot of places, attend some nice events, there would be no grammar tests, and all the students would be around 25 years old. No grammar, interesting trips, and all the students are my peers, hmm…That didn’t remind me of school, more like hanging out with fellows. With a pinch of salt, I decided to give it a try, since it’s intended for young people, and I really missed my friends from Serbia. Little did I know that this class would surpass my expectations and become my favourite!

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Youth Class is friendship. I come from a land where interpersonal relationships are of great importance. My country is known for its natural beauty: mountains, rivers, spas, villages, many churches that date back to the 12th century, many monuments, fresh air… We are also famous for hospitality, and a warm and welcoming attitude. We enjoy gathering with our families, relatives, and friends. Sunday is reserved for family lunch, but we visit each other every time we have a chance, no matter if it’s a working day or weekend. If we need any help, we know that our family and friends will be there for us, and they will always give us a hand. In the past, and it is still common for some parts of our country, people used to gather and help each other with many agricultural duties, and those kinds of gatherings were called “mobe”. One or more days, people would come to one household and help with showing and harvesting corn, tilling the field, planting, and picking fruits and veggies, and many more. Everyone would bring some food and drinks to share with others, people would sing and tell funny stories while doing the chores. Next time, they would go to another household and help another family, and so on, till all the jobs were done.

Nowadays, “mobe” are not that common in their original form, but the essence is still present: we come and help when needed, otherwise we just meet and catch up. In the evening, we usually go for a walk; all the stores close about 9 P.M. or even later, cities are busy, and streets are usually crowded. I was surprised that when I came here: all the shops usually close between 5 and 6 P.M., there aren’t many people on the streets, everything is quiet… Knowing how friendly we are, and that social life is essential for us, could you imagine how hard it was for me when I moved here, far away from family and friends? Accustomed to spending as much time as I could with them, I started to miss the good old times and wonder if I would make some new friends here. Luckily, I discovered Navitas and met amazing people from all over the world! 

“My name is Dragana. I am 29 years old, and I am from Macedonia. In my country I have been teaching German for 6 years. I joined the Youth Class in February this year. I found out about it through my friends from Navitas. This class helps us to improve our English communication skills and to meet new friends in Australia. In this Class we have a lot of fun, we are discussing different topics. We have guest speakers who explain different topics to us, they also prepare us for our career, employment and teach us about important interview skills. After attending Youth Class I feel more confident and settled in Australia. With one word I can say that it’s worth attending this class!“

Dragana, age 29, from Macedonia

I remember the first time I came to Youth Class… I was the first to come so I had a chance to chat a little bit with the teacher Francis while waiting for other students, and we hit it off straight away! I recognised that she had a warm and welcoming attitude as well, and even though I had never spoken to her before, I felt like I knew her from somewhere. Actually, it was her kind personality that made me feel welcome. The first thing we did was rearrange the table setting, and that was the moment I realised that this class would indeed differ from others! Instead of sitting behind each other as usual, we arranged the tables so that we could sit opposite each other and see everyone well so no one could feel left out. In that moment I knew I would love coming to this class, because the new approach to sitting order was the first sign that this class would offer some interesting and fresh learning methods.  

And it really did! We started practicing our speaking skills, and we weren’t even aware of that. The teacher would always come up with some amusing games after which we would get to know more about each other – which helped us create strong bonds, we would slowly start overcoming stage fright and become more self-assured and willing to talk with others, and at the end of the day we would leave the classroom proud of our success and improvements.  

This is not a class where students repeat the teacher’s words automatically or just answer the questions about the read text; this is a class where you actively participate in conversation on a wide range of topics, you express your opinion and attitudes, you speak about your and listen about others’ point of view, thus you develop critical thinking and assertive communication. The best thing is that you won’t even notice that the learning process is in progress; you’ll have fun chatting with your classmates, but at the end of the day you’ll realise that you weren’t nervous, you spoke without worrying about making mistakes, and you truly enjoyed the conversation. 

For example, we once played a game which we called ‘The Magical Bag’. We all sat in the circle and had to pick one object from the bag that the teacher had prepared for us, without peeking. After pulling the object from the bag, we would have to talk about it until the teacher told us to stop. It might look like a piece of cake, but it wasn’t that easy. For example, someone picked a plastic cup and had to talk about it for about 2 minutes. You can describe its colour, shape, material, and purpose really quickly but after that you have to continue talking, so our friend spoke about plastic cups as a sort of plastic waste which must be reduced otherwise, we’re polluting the land. She then spoke about different usages of cups, and drinking water from them, then she continued her exposure with a comparison between tap and bottled water. She used many synonyms and repeated the same opinion in other words many times, and she managed to talk without stopping until the teacher said it was enough. After that, other students could ask her a question about plastic cups or anything she was talking about, so we got to know even more information about her preferences and way of thinking. We had some great time, we laughed a lot, we learnt some new synonyms and antonyms, we didn’t feel afraid to talk because we were surrounded with our friends, the atmosphere was pleasant and slowly we became less afraid to speak in English with people outside our class, too. Despite this game might look silly to someone, thanks to games like this and our interaction, we became more courageous and less stiff.  

“I think Youth Class is good for me, because I can speak English with my friends and practice English when I come to school. Youth Class helps me to speak English, dare to express myself and go out to learn about the things around us. Youth Class helped me speak English more than any other classes and I can go out and learn things outside of class.”

Laksana Sridee, age 33, from Thailand

One of the tasks we also had was building the highest possible tower out of spaghetti and marshmallow. Once again, it might seem silly but wait till you read the explanation. We were divided into teams, and each team had a leader who was in charge of delegating responsibilities among team members and leading. The leader would also create a building plan and present it to the team. Team members would analyse it and point out potential flaws in the original plan. After making a sketch and discussion they would start building the tower according to their roles. Some of the members made the base, others prepared the middle part and the top. During this process team players had to communicate all the time, identify weak spots, and suggest better solutions. Without discussion we wouldn’t have been able to finish the project, so once again we worked on our speaking skills and developed them even more! See, even if it may look pointless at first glance, on second thoughts you realise that this uncomplicated task helped us upgrade our employability skills: communication, initiative, teamwork, planning, organizing and management.   

All these skills are essential when it comes to workplace in Australia. Employers seek employees who are responsible, who can effectively communicate with their colleagues, clients, and supervisors, who are willing to step up and propose new ideas and their point of view, who are great team players and problem solvers, well-organised, dedicated, workers who can finish their jobs within the deadlines. It’s also important we know that all the skills we have are transferrable, which means that if we developed one skill, we can use it in different fields. When searching for a job, never say you have neither working experience nor required skills, because even your everyday life can be perfect preparation for your future employment. Let me explain it: if your parents are employed, so you have to stay at home to look after you younger siblings, prepare food, and feed them, read them stories, play with them, provide them with educational and recreational activities, then you might be paving the way for the jobs in field of childcare. So, if that’s what you want to do in future, in job interviews you should place a great emphasis on your valuable experience in taking care of your brothers and sisters. (Speaking of childcare, you can gain additional skills and experience by enrolling in ‘Pathways to Work’ (PtW, SLPET) program which is available for Navitas’ students. Childcare is just one of the options, there are many more included in this program: Pathways to Work (PtW, SLPET).

The part of the class that helped us learn more about our surroundings was excursions. We visited a lot of places, like the Museum of Contemporary Art (after enjoying incredible pieces of art we made a picnic at Botanical Garden), Renewed Liverpool City Library (we found out that membership is free and there are many activities we can participate in), Whitman Center (they informed us about job perspectives in sports industry and also let us know about all the facilities this leisure center offers) and Bondi Beach.  

“My name’s Duc, but you can call me Ben. I’m 18. I’m from Vietnam. I’ve been in Australia for 4 months. My hobbies are gardening, playing games on my phone, reading novels on my phone and watching cartoons. About the Youth Class, I like it because of my classmates, and the teache, all of them are very kind, friendly, powerful, all the lessons of the Youth Class are very useful for me, and the excursions are funny, too. The Youth Class helped me in many ways: I had the chance to visit a lot of famous places in Sydney, I gained more knowledge about life, and I met a lot of new friends in the Youth class. I think the greatest advantage of the Youth Class compared to other classes is that the students have lots of energy because we are young, we always have positive energy in the class and try to do new things as much as possible.”

Ben (Duc), age 18, from Vietnam

If it wasn’t for the Youth Class maybe we would never know about the breathtaking exhibition Sculpture by the Sea. It was organised on Bondi Beach, it contained more than 100 sculptures and the entrance was free.  

It took us more than one hour and a half to get there, but we didn’t want to waste our time, so we decided to get to know each other better. While driving on the train we took our phones and found pictures to show each other how we usually celebrate some holidays or special days in our countries, how we get ready for birthdays, engagements, and weddings. We were also looking at the photos of traditional meals and clothes, we were talking about our customs and cultural legacy. We played some nice songs and videos.  Time flew and we reached our destination, amazed by the view in front of us… The exhibition was stunning: the whole coast was turned into the showroom, there were spectacular artworks on every corner, vivid colors, modern designs… It looked like an outdoor museum! A giant can, enormous doilies, huge Lego picture, waterfall, melting ice-cream truck  – how cool is that!  

Having seen how much we enjoyed taking selfies, beautiful landscape pictures and recording videos, the teacher decided to surprise us next week and bring us a guest speaker – famous photographer Lin. He came to teach us about taking incredible shots and to judge our photos from dazzling exhibition. What an incredible experience!  

This is the great advantage of the Youth Class: you can easily make new friends and discover some places you’ve never been to before! If you’re a young person who is considering joining the AMEP Youth Class, I can honestly say, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Do it! The Youth Class is designed to be interactive and interesting for young people specifically, and through it I have made life-long friends, and just some of them are Dragana, Laksana and Ben.

Places and events to visit and explore in Sydney (free entrance): 

• Royal Botanic Garden  
• Darling Harbour  
• The Rocks 
• Museum of Contemporary Art 
• Saint Mary’s Cathedral  
• Art Gallery of NSW  
• Queen Victoria Building
• Casula Powerhouse  
• Sculpture by the Sea (annual exhibition held between October and November, between the southern end of Bondi Beach and Tamarama)  
• Vivid Sydney (annual celebration held between May and June, to enter some events you need to purchase a ticket)  
• Liverpool City Library (you can become a member for free, all you need is a proof of your name and address)  

Places to visit (fees apply):

• Sea Life Aquarium 
• Taronga Zoo 
• Sydney Tower Eye 
• Luna Park