SBATs in South Grafton pursue their passions video

Patrick:

I'm Patrick, and I go to South Grafton High School. I'm in year 11. I'm doing Cert II in agriculture. I chose this certificate because I've been brought up on a farm my whole life, and I just love working with farm animals. Working on a cattle station involves fencing, mustering, working. We work with the tractors, ride-ons, horses, cows.

Tia:

Hi, my name's Tia. I'm in Year 11. I go to South Grafton High School, and I'm doing Certificate II in business services. For my traineeship, I am working in the library and I am acting as an assistant. So I've just been helping with bookshelves and the library system. For the administration side of my traineeship, I'm working with the Oliver system on the computers. So that's just a lot of taking books off the system at the moment and lending and returning books. I'm being supported by the librarian, Miss Fisher, and she's been helping me a lot with my on-the-job learning.

Patrick:

In this traineeship, I’m real hands-on. I like the practical stuff. I'm a real quick learner. My teachers helped me catch up on my schoolwork. I'm only doing one day a week and I can still catch up. And then when I come back to school, they sit down and help me.

Tia:

I am working Mondays, so that's one day out of my five days of school. And then I use my weekends to catch up on work that I missed on Mondays. I'm hoping with this traineeship that I'll be able to learn the skills to become a proper artist and sell my work commercially. To be a successful artist, people need to know how to market their art properly, otherwise it won't reach as many people as it could. And also budgeting money so you're not going broke after your first five paintings.

Patrick:

At such a young age, it's so good to have so many opportunities while I'm still at school. After I finish this traineeship, I want to go to the Northern Territory to work at a cattle station, just meeting new people, see where it goes from there.

Tia:

I received the Elsa Dixon grant, and it's allowed me to do art and business-related things at the same time rather than just having to stick to one. I'm 15, and I found it a lot easier to sort of get a head start with all this setting up my own business kind of stuff and learning the skills early on. Since I started my traineeship, it really helped me figure out what I want to do after school and taking off a lot of stress of having to worry about what I do with the rest of my life.

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