12 May 2026

In this episode, hear how civics and citizenship education is brought to life at Golden Grove High School with teacher Chantel Lee and year 11 student Joel Strauss. The pair share their experiences from last year’s inaugural Active Citizenship Convention, where students from across the state learned about politics, democracy, and having a real say in their communities. The episode highlights practical ways young people are supported to take on leadership roles and drive positive change, such as holding a student forum and taking on social action projects to improve access to period products. These activities help students build confidence, find their voice, and learn the value of working together, debating ideas, and making decisions. When students are given the chance, it’s clear to see just how eager and able they are to make a real difference in their school and beyond.

Show Notes

Safeguarding democracy – Department for Education website

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teacher Podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. Today I'm joined by some people from Golden Grove High School, Chantel Lee, secondary teacher, HASS, English. Welcome to you.

Chantel Lee: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: And Joel Strauss. Now year 11 student, but year 10 student last year at the Active Citizenship Convention. Tell us about that. What was it? How was it?

Joel Strauss: It was fantastic to say the least. It was a deep dive into politics in Australia, having your own voice and knowing what's going on around you in the media and being able to interpret and get your own information, your own opinion out of things instead of following what others might do.

Dale Atkinson: Well. So it sounds exciting this citizen ship convention, but the reason we did that Chantel was specific, wasn't it? It's because we wanted to make civics and civics education more relevant, more engaging, more meaningful for students. What does that look like at Golden Grove?

Chantel Lee: Actually our school, so our principal will say that our word of the year was community last year and this year it's more of like connected community.

So our school is very much pro getting the students to have that student agency and see what they can do to make not just the world a better place, but our school a better place as well. So at Golden Grove that means that it's not just civics and citizenship education that we focus on. We also have a number of student leadership classes, peer support classes, our school captains are very active, and actually tomorrow, Joel is participating in a whole school forum. So it's like our own sort of school parliament. So I think our school is very good at supporting students and having that voice and feeling like they can do something to make their school a better place.

Dale Atkinson: Let's talk a bit about the whole school forum. What does that look like and what was the chrysalis of that as an idea?

Chantel Lee: So the school forum came out of one of our previous teachers. She really wanted to give the students more voice especially around decision making around the school as well.

So what happens is you have about two per class, per year level. So we have between one to 10 home groups, so from each home group and they will come and represent what they believe it should be, what they want to change in the school, offer different perspectives. So us as Grove teachers or home group teachers, we actually nominated students for this role and they talk about how they wanna see change at the school and what issues are affecting them and how teachers can better help them.

Dale Atkinson: And how is the Safeguarding Democracy initiative been interplaying with activities like that?

Chantel Lee: Oh, very much. Especially in our Disability Unit as well. So our Disability Unit did an amazing project as part of our professional learning collaboration team. So our year seven and nine Safeguarding Democracy team actually worked with them to integrate First Nations perspectives better into our disability curriculum. So now they all have First Nations names for each of their classrooms. The students did a lot of research on it. They actually had a full-on vote about what names they wanted to do, and that was shared with the whole school, which was really beautiful to see.

From my perspective as a senior teacher, a lot of it has been around student agency and encouraging students to have that voice and actually see specific changes to that they can make. So in my class, we did a social action project around how to improve toilet facilities.

One of the key takeaways from that was a lot of the girls said that they needed more access to period products and we actually worked with those girls to organize having them across the school because our campus is massive. So if there were in one area of the school, they actually had no access. So now they do.

I remember one of the girls saying to me, it's really cool to see that I can have an idea and I can make it happen and there's ways of doing that.

Dale Atkinson: Is that something you've experienced as well, Joel, in terms of having more of a say in the nature and activities that are going on at the school site?

Joel Strauss: Yeah, of course. The project actually founded off the convention. It was on the bus on the way back we decided, “hey, let's have a say, let's do this as our next big assignment and project”. So it wasn't like, none of us were fighting for a grade. After that convention, we all fought for change.

Dale Atkinson: Has it changed the way that you've interacted with your fellow students? Is it a different kind of conversation when you've got this frame of reference around like democratic activity?

Joel Strauss: Absolutely. I didn't know many of them to start with, but now that we've all got this understanding, we can work together to find solutions using methods that were shown at the convention using scenarios that they gave us.

Chantel Lee: And you guys were really proactive in getting your, that sort of stakeholder participation and understanding what it means to have stakeholders and thinking of the student body as separate stakeholders as well. And that not every student wants the same thing. So that democracy is a negotiation, it's compromise and having to learn to work through that compromise. Definitely.

Dale Atkinson: And how much of a push did you need to give the students, Chantel?

Chantel Lee: What was great about it is I'm very big on student agency and that democratic teaching process. So, I had an idea that I wanted to do a social action project, and like Joel said, we actually did think of it on the bus back from the convention because they were really activated and they were really excited. And I just said, what kind of project do you wanna do? Let's do something that's change from the school and that's the framework I gave them. I put them into working parties, so they had to collaborate and they all had very specific goals, but it was the idea that we're all working towards one goal. So for me it was more putting in place the framework, but the students were the drivers of what change they wanted to see.

Dale Atkinson: And how have you built that into your coursework and your assessment work? What's that look like for you in terms of effort?

Chantel Lee: I did have to look about what, especially applying some of that SA Curriculum dispositional work. So what disposition do I want to see? Luckily our school already has dispositions, so it's really easy when the students are familiar with that disposition language to encourage that. But it's if I want them to be discerning, what does that mean in terms of primary and secondary data on analysing sources? If I want them to think ethically, how does that incorporate other perspectives and perspectives that they might not agree with? How do I create a safe space for those perspectives that you might not agree with?

And we did have this motto at the beginning of the course that I gave to all of the year tens, which was - “No. You're not entitled to your opinion. You're entitled to what you can argue for with evidence.” And they would cite that back to me if I said something. So they'd go, Miss, where's your evidence for that? How do you know that? And even my class this year, they say the same thing. They'll go, Miss, what's the evidence for that? But just having that mindset, gives, puts you in that critical thinking mindset of actually how do I know this information? Can I verify it? Where can I find a deeper understanding of it?

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. It's such an important skill to learn. Joel, when you think about learning about democracy, why does it matter for kids and students?

Joel Strauss: You don't want to be sent out into the adult world when you're 18 and go and vote and think, what am I looking at here? Especially with preferential voting like, they need the knowledge of being able to sort through information online, knowing what they're fighting for, what is misinformation, what's disinformation, what they're actually voting for because whoever they vote for could be the person who they have to be led by, and that's the life that they'll live. So without this information, they could be led down a road that they don't wanna be on.

Dale Atkinson: In terms of the actual citizenship convention itself, what was the day like for you, Joel?

Joel Strauss: You've got people from all different kinds of schools, from all over the state that you're just, you're meeting. And they have this lunchtime legends where you'd go down to the foyer of Adelaide Oval and they'd had players from Adelaide Oval. They'd had other local icons that you can go take a photo with, talk with, get 'em to sign stuff. And they actually had this little mission sheet, this little objective sheet that we had to go to get a photo with someone, get 'em to sign something, and they had a voting booth. We had to go there and vote for like parties that another school had created. And they were all convincing us to vote for them. We had to do preferential voting. They also had a basketball hoop there, so you can play with other people you haven't met before. Talk about the convention during the day. Talk about those scenarios you did and your little group sessions, or the voting techniques you'd done and have some lunch together. It was all around a great day for the overall message. Yeah.

Chantel Lee: And my favourite part of the lunchtime legends was seeing them intermingle with kids from all different schools that they would've never met otherwise, like from way out in the country or in the city, just of such a diverse range of students just getting to know each other and seeing what they have in common.

Dale Atkinson: And there's also quite a bit of fun on the day, isn't there?

Chantel Lee: Oh, so much fun. So we had the kids overcoming that shyness and they got really comfortable with each other. And that really culminated to the end of the day when we had Dem Mob, who really got us out of our seats and dancing and some kids up there singing and rapping. And they actually wrote a rap that students contributed to throughout the day. So they were gr abbing kids throughout the day to get them to add lyrics.

Dale Atkinson: What's the interplay for you, Chantel, in terms of you've got this big, structured event that's coming up on the calendar and you know that some of your kids are gonna go…

Chantel Lee: Yep.

Dale Atkinson: How do you design some of your coursework to reflect this big event and what's the structure afterwards?

Chantel Lee: So coursework wise, it's, we were in the middle of doing media literacy anyway, so we talked about what the panel was gonna be about, a bit about some of the issues that might come up, especially around AI. AI is a really hot topic amongst students and being able to verify information. So, it's very much, what can we get out of the day? What do we think we should, we want to get out of the day? What does democracy look like for us? And if the slogan is gonna be our voice, one voice, one like our impact, what does that look like? What does that look like on a local level? And how do we connect that to bigger global issues? Because a key part of the convention that I really loved and a big part of my teaching is you don't have to be the difference in the world, but you can make a difference. And so what's the difference that we wanna make. Afterwards, it was immediately obvious that the kids were really activated, really excited, and they really wanted to do something. They felt like they were part of a bigger community and they felt emboldened and they got more confidence around, hey, we are not the only ones who care. There are all of these other kids who care and wanna make a difference. And one of the great things in the, on the actual day was the way that they had people in the crowd asking students what they thought of. And as the day progressed, you could see that the shyness melted away and the students got more confident speaking and saying what they wanted to say, offering their opinions and not being so scared to offer that opinion. Because I do find with young people, they struggle to say what they mean or what they wanna say because they feel like they might be judged for it or it's not a safe place to have an opinion.

Dale Atkinson: So how do you surf that wave of enthusiasm when it comes?

Chantel Lee: You get the kids to tell you what their ideas are and you work with them to see what is doable, what isn't, within a framework of what you want them to learn. So this unit about, for our social action project was all about government policy and how policies get created. So we learned about; What is a working party? How do we get stakeholder information? what is the actual process if we want to make a facilities change at the school how does that work through Governing Council? When's the next Governing Council meeting? What is Governing Council? So we actually looked specifically at the governance of school and how government works and that made it a lot more realistic for the students as well. So I'm able to show you it's very much skills and process based and then the actual topic is student driven.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. Nice. And what Joel, what's it taught you about what's possible?

Joel Strauss: Anything's possible in the big picture, it's the work that gets there that drives a solution. There's a lot of communication that needs to happen, a lot of research that needs to happen, but eventually you will get there as long as everyone's willing to put in the effort.

Dale Atkinson: That's such a good message. What advice would you give to other students who are coming along to the convention this year?

Joel Strauss: Come to the convention with an open mind. You are going to learn something. Even if you think you know everything about media, politics, and just Australia as a whole, you are going to learn something different. Come to the convention knowing that, and you're gonna leave with so much that you're ready to go and be ready for the future.

Dale Atkinson: And Chantel, what, what advice for teachers?

Chantel Lee: Don't be afraid to talk to kids about what they care about because they actually care about a lot and they have a lot to say and it's worth listening to because they are our future and I'm so proud of these guys. They've made such a great contribution to our school and I can't wait to see what happens when they grow up.

Dale Atkinson: Chantel, Joel, thank you very much for your time.

Chantel Lee: Thank you.