Success proves Claire is a class act
IT was a business class to remember for St Monica’s College Year 9 student Claire Gattera, whose study on Thursday was interrupted by the Premier’s announcement she was a recipient of a prestigious award.
Ms Gattera, 14, was selected as one of eight winners of the 2023 Premier’s Anzac Award.
“I was in business (class) when it happened, and my teacher was so excited for me, so proud,” Ms Gattera said.
“The whole class is like ‘wow, this is amazing Claire’. At assembly – we had afterwards, it wasn’t planned – the teacher who helped me with it, Ms Taifalos, came up and announced it all. Lots of smiling faces, it’s been pretty insane.”
The Premier’s Anzac Prize is an initiative championed by the Department of Education and RSL Queensland to enrich the lives of students through a coveted study and travel experience. Students are encouraged to submit applications every year and winners are chosen from all over Queensland.
The award recipients go on to uphold the Anzac legacy by visiting and learning about key sites where Australian troops fought and take on community engagement and fundraising projects.
This year eight Queensland
students and two teacher chaperones are all set to embark on an “educational trip of a lifetime”.
“I heard about it through my teacher, and I remember thinking that this is insane – you get a free trip to Europe and you get to learn about all of this history,” Ms Gattera said.
For her application, Ms Gattera put together a multimedia project focusing on the relevance of the Anzac Spirit in this day and age.
“It was about six weeks or so of work. I used interviews from the news,” Ms Gattera explained.
“I focused on climate protests because there’s people, young Australians, standing up for what they believe in that is so similar to what the Anzacs did for us.”
“It’s wonderful to see the travel component return and for our students to visit sites in London, Prance, and Belgium,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk
said on Thursday.
“It will allow the group to see and hear first-hand, the Anzac tradition and become Ambassadors for the Anzac legacy when they return. ”
“To think that I’ll be going where the Anzacs fought and where they died for us to have such freedoms today, that’s just insane,” Ms Gattera said.
The announcement came as the Far North gathers to pay its respects on Remembrance Day on Friday.