The Melbourne High School History Club is a student-adult partnership with the mission of elevating our school’s History community. From its founding in 2022 to 2025, our club has grown from 50 to over 250 members, utilizing innovation, co-leadership and long-term collaboration to drive a positive, measurable impact. Through our creatively structured department model - Events, Meetings and Media - we provide pathways for every type of student to engage with history, whether a passionate history veteran or a casual learner.

Firstly, the Events Department manages large-scale, cross-institutional activities. In 2024, we hosted a student forum on whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. It included three schools, over 100 attendees, a trivia competition, two professor guest-speakers with opposing views and a video/presentation project that allowed students to present persuasive arguments on the issue. The forum was rated ⅘ stars by a 20-student survey, and it was praised by Professor Lynch as “a great [educational] event, where important ideas [were] debated (rather than ducked).” We’ve also hosted a full-day 30-student excursion around the Melbourne CBD, which included guided tours at four historical buildings (Old Melbourne Gaol, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Cook’s Cottage, Parliament House), and was rated 7.2/10 by a 10-student survey. Lastly, we’ve hosted three guest speaker events, including a former eight-year Premier of Victoria (Steve Bracks), who discussed his lifelong-political journey with 60 attendees; a decorated Vietnam War Veteran, who discussed his stories and showed his many tools/weapons to dozens of attendees, and a UniMelb Professor of British History, who discussed slavery in the empire.

The Meetings Department is the club’s weekly engine. One of our most popular innovations is our nine history-themed game show parodies, including ‘Jeopardy’, ‘Hard Quiz’, ‘Pointless’ and ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ These student-run events feature dozens of history questions, dramatic hosting, and twists such as team play and custom formats to fit a classroom lunchtime setting. They’re advertised with persuasive posters and teams/compass posts, generally attracting 20-50 students each. Besides that, our usual meetings range from re-enactments of life in concentration camps to debates on Mao Zedong and the causes of WW1, and from informative student presentations to casual history games, trivia and Kahoots. So far in 2025, our weekly meetings have had an average attendance of over 26 students each, and we’ve hosted 56 meetings over the years.

Lastly, The Media Department extends the club’s reach far beyond the classroom. Through Instagram and YouTube, we’ve released 13 professionally edited videos in which individual students answer history questions for the chance to win prizes. These videos - scripted, hosted, filmed and edited by a team of students - have collectively earned almost 7500 views and reach several hundreds of students in the school community each. We’ve also previously created informational infographics, ran a student newsletter and produced a club website.

There are so many examples of this initiative promoting meaningful partnerships and student voice

• Steve Bracks Guest Speakership: We (the student cabinet) liaised closely with teachers, Assistant Principals, Bracks’ secretary and each other to organize logistics, PA announcements, posters, advertisements and a date for the talk. When Bracks withdrew due to a reply delay, we worked closely with staff and each other to write a heartfelt apology, provide the delayed information and successfully reschedule the event.
• Interschool Forum: The forum gave a platform for students to discuss and share their views on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings through the group video/presentation project. Additionally, we collaborated effectively with professors and staff and students at several schools to organize and run the forum. (E.g. After unsuccessfully emailing schools for over two months, we learnt to call schools and directly speak with their event coordinators/history teachers to win them over.) We now have long-term connections with five school’s event coordinators and two professors, which we plan on using.
• Meetings: Through debates, our meetings provide a platform for students to persuade and argue on various historical topics. We’ve also collaborated with other clubs, such as the Diplomacy Club, Astronomy Club and Indian Culture Club, for various meetings. Lastly, we work with our head teacher (Mr Bowen) to ensure our classroom is always booked and to post game show parody advertisements on Compass.
• Full-Day Excursion: We worked closely with school staff, historical building directors, tour-guide companies, the school’s business manager and attending students to set-up and advertise the excursion.
• Videos: Our videos allow ‘nerdy’ students to proudly show-off their historical knowledge to hundreds of their peers and earn a little bit of fame, respect and admiration. We’ve also negotiated with teachers for permission to use our phones for filming.

Each of our departments relies on student voice, peer-to-peer collaboration and student-adult partnerships, reflecting shared leadership at the heart of this initiative.

• Educational Impact: We deepen students’ historical understanding through engaging student activities that promote critical thinking, source analysis and historical reasoning, transforming passive learning into active exploration. In doing so, we also inspire students for history, with many students pursuing VCE History after having engaged deeply with the club in Years 9-10.
• Social Impact: We foster a fun, collaborative environment where students from various backgrounds can build friendships, compete with each other, and share their intellectual passion and ideas in an inclusive setting.
• Long-Term Impact: By empowering students to lead, organize and learn the lessons of the past, we cultivate wisdom, leadership, communication and project-management skills that extend well beyond high school.

I have already addressed the award’s requirements in my previous responses. So, I would like to make a couple other points relating to this.

• This award would fuel our future efforts. While we’re proud of our achievements so far, we plan on doing a lot more. This includes an interschool forum with 200-300 students on the invasion/occupation of Afghanistan following 9/11, and a holiday excursion to the Daylesford Country Spa Heritage Railways, in collaboration with our school’s Railway Interest Group. With a national-level award in our credentials, we’ll more strongly attract other schools’, organizations’ and student leaders’ attention to further fuel our future efforts.
• NB: Our club's leadership has included many familiar faces, with seven students and teachers having held executive positions for at least three years, including our President/Founder, who’s held the position for four years (Years 9-12). Hence, we believe that all the club’s initiatives - over its four years of existence - should be recognized in their entirety for this award.