COVID Impacts - English Oral

persona introduction (audience reference) (3)

Good morning, everyone, my name is Imogen Thomas, a 19-year-old youth ambassador with the Victorian Youth Congress, a group that advocates for young people alongside government.

I want to begin by acknowledging every person in this room, whether you're a youth worker, educator, health professional, policymaker, or a young person who has weathered the storm of COVID-19 and its impact on education.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring.

contention sentences (3)

Today, I speak not just as one voice, but for a generation shaped by COVID, a generation still healing.

UNSW Medicine & Health reported… stat.

But today, I want to highlight the quiet crisis that followed, our mental health decline, our refusal of school, and the utter lack of urgency shown for this struggling generation.

mental health metaphor (3)

When lockdown first hit, it felt like we were thrown overboard and pulled underwater by reckless waves, we couldn’t predict.

Each day in isolation, was like treading water to stay afloat.

Some of us sailed, some of us floated and some of us sank.

what’s in mental health paragraph (8)

talk that COVID is behind

2 statistics

dismissal, overlooked, forgotten

3 questions

lockdown kids reference

don’t need more slogans to speak up, need people to respond

Dr / ABC quotes

call to action

metal health rhetorical questions (3)

1. But how do you move on when psychologists are booked out for months?

2. When your pain is called laziness or angst?

3. When you reach out, but no one’s there?

mental health call to action (2)

To the health professionals here: We know you care. We know you're trying.

But this crisis was never treated with the urgency it needed.

school refusal metaphor (3)

School was our shoreline, a place of connection where we anchored and belonged.

Screens replaced real life connection, abandoning us at sea without wind.

We were navigating in the doldrums of lockdown alone.

what’s in school refusal paragraph (6 w/t tri-repetition bit)

many still lost at sea

statistics list

This isn’t laziness (followed by repeat section)

• It’s trauma never treated.

• Disruption never restored.

• Damage becoming irreversible.

mothers from lockdown series described…

rhetorical questions

call to action

rhetorical questions for school refusal (3)

1. Where was the national plan to bring back these kids?

2. Where were the targeted interventions?

3. Why was all this ignored?

school refusal call to action (3)

To the educators here, this burden isn’t yours to carry alone.

But we need schools that support, not just structure.

We need re-engagement programs that meet us where we are not where we're expected to be.

solutions metaphor (2)

But even in rough seas, can be navigated.

With support, wind and passion we can find the shoreline again.

conclusion metaphor (5)

Yes, the wrecking waves left marks on our boat and ripped through our sails.

Like the waves indent patterns in the sand… COVID and its impacts became etched into us

But waves also cleanse, wash over the marking in the sand, and the storm never lasts forever.

Now, we get to choose what stays and is washed away

The tide turning and its time we anchor down.

final sentence

We are not defined as the generation left behind. We are the generation that endured. The generation that rebuilt.

Thank you.