With an action packed calendar of free activities, Lexis English | Byron Bay has been piloting new and exciting options to fill students’ spare time.
In order to ensure that our students have their say in what they would like to see on the activity calendar each month, Campus Manager Lisa organised a school wide survey to get the lowdown on what our students want, what they could do without, and what sends them to sleep!
One overwhelming factor was food – it turns out that our students like to eat!! BBQs, picnics and cookery workshops were all notably popular! As for future activities, our students showed that they have been getting into the swing of things Byron Bay style by requesting a raw food workshop.
Currently – food related activities, sports on the beach (football, cricket, volleyball), yoga classes and movie screenings are the most popular activities on offer.
Our Friday arvo beach trips have been a resounding success, and Monday afternoon yoga classes are always well received. Our Thursday afternoon movie screenings always have a fair few takers – especially if the waves are bad and the wind is howling!
Skateboarding can be hit and miss – we have a few die hard skaters and those that are just not interested in carving up the concrete.
Our least popular current activities were the Drama Club (no budding thespians among us, it seems!), debate and pronunciation clubs, and also the Friday night at Cheeky Monkey’s. Unfortunately, whilst cheap and cheerful, Cheeky Monkey’s is also a sweat-sodden meat market, and our discerning students are after a more authentic nightlife experience!
This we have rectified immediately – by organising a new student night with Backpacker World Travel on Wednesday nights at The Byron Bay Brewery’s Buddha Bar – a hotspot for our students and a great place to hang out with awesome live music, good deals on food and beer brewed on site. With their BWT student cards – the students now get a free drink, which will surely sweeten heading to the Brewery on a Wednesday night.
The students remain keen for slack lining – although the timing has meant that Cambridge classes miss out due to their GIL class. Going into March, we will be moving slack lining to a different day so everyone can have a go.
When asked what they would like to do in the future, most students went with activities currently included in our free programme. However there were a few additions – a bus tour of the local area, and a lighthouse tour were two surprise options which went down well! Table tennis tournaments, trips to the pub, martial arts classes and didgeridoo lessons were all popular choices – we will definitely start incorporating as much of this as we can into our March activity calendar!
Organised evening activities seemed like a winner – with a party especially for Lexis students, a trip to a club, eating out at a restaurant and going on a pub crawl all proving to be of interest to the students. Speed dating was not as popular, obviously everyone was scared that they would be sat opposite their teacher =)
As always, come to see Amy in reception if you have any suggestions or any burning questions to get off your chest! We look forward to making the activity calendar even more exciting, and hopefully joining you guys for a beer or two!!