By Deanne Jeffers
RENOWNED journalist, speaker, and author Madonna King graced Shepparton on Monday, spearheading a girls’ leadership workshops for students in Years 7-8 and 10-11 at Shepparton ACE Secondary College.
Reflecting on the sessions, Madonna emphasised the importance of instilling confidence in oneself, particularly among young girls. “It’s about finding confidence in themselves because often that comes naturally to boys or there’s networks where they can. Even people my age, don’t actually have those ready-made networks,” she said.
Madonna urged students to look beyond the confines of school life, emphasising that adolescence is but a small fraction of their journey. “When we’re at school, we think this is our life… but you’re going to live till you’re 85 or 88. School and being 16 is a tiny part of it. So, it’s what you do next that matters,” she elaborated.
“I think the biggest challenge for girls at this age, teenagers, is to believe in themselves because they can be really supportive of each other, but they’re brutal in self-judgement.”
With six books on teenagers under her belt and extensive interviews with young adults and professionals, including her best-seller Being 14, Madonna brings a wealth of knowledge to her seminars in schools. She highlighted the exceptional camaraderie among ACE College students, commending their support for each other across all year levels.
“In some big private schools, there can be a bit of meanness around groups of girls… I have never been to a school where there is so much support for each other than in this school today,” Madonna said.
“We need to try and work out a way to reduce that kind of group mentality because as a mother or as an adult, we don’t have tuckshop friends and tennis friends… We have friends, but at school it’s almost cultivated that this is my group.”
Seeing how the students embraced their strengths and uplifted each other in the sessions and in the school more broadly, Madonna said, “I found that quite inspirational, and it’s obviously important to the school leadership that girls are given a path forward as young females and can dream big, and I think it’s working.”
