Meir Advocate
Your editors, Becky Salamon, Sofia Berkovic and Amali Allul Orozco
What is the Meir Advocate and who are we?
Hi there everyone! We’re so excited to be your brand new editors for the Meir Advocate! We’re three Year 9 students – Amali, Sofia and Becky – and we love Meir (obviously). We’re so excited to be writing the Meir Advocate from now on. Before we get into the rest of this term’s edition, have a quick read on what the Meir Advocate is all about…
The Meir Advocate is a termly newsletter by Meirans, for not just Meirans, but our whole school community, and we’re focused on bringing the latest news about Meir to all of you. In our articles, you’ll get an inside look at things like Meir House Assemblies, what’s new around the House and what there is to look forward to.
A warm welcome to new Meirans
We are so excited to welcome all the new members of our House in 2024. Firstly, we are so happy to have a new group of Year 7s joining us! We hope you enjoy being a part of the best House! We are also thrilled to welcome all our new Meir teachers:
● Year 7 Tutor – Mr Ryan
● Year 10 Tutor – Ms Lee
● Year 12 Tutor – Welcome back, Ms Norman!
Inside a Meir House Assembly
We managed to get some special insider information on what it’s like to attend a prestigious Meir Assembly!
Some highlights from Term 1 House Assemblies included:
- A mock swimming relay-race across the floor of the Mille Phillips Theatre in preparation for the Swimming carnival.
- ‘Slideshow karaoke’ – a super fun game where one representative from each Year group gives an impromptu presentation. You see slides for the first time while talking about them. It’s all about making people laugh with your unexpected speeches. Year 11 was voted the winner of the game!
- ‘Café D’ where we sat in circles of mixed Year groups and discussed progressively deeper questions about ourselves, while eating snacks (naturally!)
- A collaboration with Szenes for International Women’s Day where we wrote poems for the women we admire most in our lives.
- And last week… We broke into our ‘Sibling Groups’ (these are groups of 12 students made up of two students from each Year group). The aim was to build the highest tower out of just spaghetti and marshmallows. A big congratulations to team Spinach who won!
Year 7 and Year 8 Survival Camp
In Week 3 of this term, all of Year 7 and Year 8, as well as a number of Year 11 Madatzim, ventured out into the bush for a week at Somerset Camp.
We interviewed two Meir Year 7 students, Amelia (Mili) Ferrer and Gideon (Gidi) Cohen, and one of their Peer Support Leaders, Liberty Waldner, to hear more about their week-long journey at the Colo River:
What was your favourite activity from the week?
Liberty: It would definitely have to be the crate stack as it was really great to see so much teamwork from everyone. It was also quite funny watching people fall from their stacks and hang in the air.
Mili: I really enjoyed doughnutting on the water. It is basically getting a donut-shaped floaty, sitting on it and floating across the river. It was so relaxing – I could have just fallen asleep. It was fun to watch people getting capsized and thrown into the water too.
Gidi: I enjoyed the milk crate stack the most because of the learning curve of stacking as quickly as possible while keeping the tower steady.
What is your best memory from camp?
Liberty: Doing the ‘stop the rain’ dance with the whole Tutor group just before we went doughnutting. It was so funny all standing in a circle singing ‘Yo-ho-ho, Yo-ho-ho’!
Mili: The most memorable thing on camp that happened to me was the milk crate stack. I am so scared of heights so it was really hard for me. You would go on a harness and your teammates would grab a rope and pull you so you don’t fall, and you have to try and stack as many milk crates as possible while balancing on them. I wasn’t going to do it but I realised I would regret it so I gave it a try and I climbed up six crates!
Gidi: On the third day we went doughnutting and it was just so relaxing hanging out with my friends while drifting down a river.
What is your funniest memory from the week?
Liberty: After we came back quite late from our Peer Support meeting on the third night it was raining quite heavily and we saw a light still on. We went over to have a look and it turned out one of the kids’ tents was pooling with water. So we had to wake up our instructor and set up another tent for them in the rain. When we were finally able to go to our own tents it was just before 11.00 pm. About two minutes after, I was in my tent and I heard, ‘Liberty… our tent’s flooded!’ It was Franki and Chloe next door to me, so they moved in to my tent and we ended up sleeping three in a tent that night instead of two and one per tent.
Mili: The funniest thing that happened on camp was when I was in a tent with my friend, Lola, and we couldn’t get to sleep because we kept laughing when we looked at each other. We could barely breathe, but then Mr Ryan came up to our tent and said he would call Mr Ezekiel if we wouldn’t be quiet, so we closed our eyes and blocked our mouths to stop from laughing! Finally, after ages, we fell asleep.
Gidi: On the last night, Ari and I were sleeping in the same tent next to Liam and we just kept joking about each other all night.
Expressions of Interest
We would love to see our fellow Meirans get involved in the Meir Advocate. If you would like to see your artwork featured, or share some awesome work you did this week, please get in touch with one of us! It’ll be added to a section showing off all our amazing Meirans called the ‘Meir Showcase’.
Get excited for…
In this section, which will be in every article, we’ll tell you about any upcoming Meir-related shenanigans that you should be getting ready for so you don’t miss out!
Coming up next term… House Music is coming in hot! If you want to be a part of Small House or X-Factor, make sure you fill out the expression of interest form sent out by your House Mads. We would love some participation from our new Year 7s!
Looking forward to a great new year!