Faith & Mission

Immersion Programs

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
- Lilla Watson, a Gangulu woman

Immersion experiences involve students in a social justice experience that has practical applications. They provide students with an opportunity to respond to the injustices around them and to attend to the needs of others.

Our aim is to help the students understand that the point of service is not just what changes as a result of one’s efforts, but that it is the change in one’s self that matters.

Immersion Units respond to the challenges of our time and how they relate to adolescent male psychology. There is a sense that, as Catholics, we have a crisis of identity, of meaning and of purpose. How do we respond and remain faithful to our traditions? Our role models need to be St Joseph as Husband and Father; Jesus as Prophet, a man of social action and revelation and Edmund Rice, as a man of faith and learning.

Year 10 students can immerse themselves in the following experiences:

  • Meraki - An adventure that will enable each participant to discover their true identity, the ‘Meraki’ immersion, facilitated by the Gregory Terrace Outdoor Education team is designed to challenge one’s beliefs and to discover each individual's true identity.
  • ACU - In this immersion program you will take a closer look at five areas of study in the health science: Exercise Science, Physiotherapy, Paramedics, Nursing, and Midwifery. Students will gain first-hand experience of the education, training, and daily clinical work of health care practitioners.
  • Timor Leste - This experience aims to be transformative in order to build relationship with the marginalised, experience Christian communities and to develop a commitment to opposing poverty and injustice, affirming human rights and cultural diversity. 
  • Beyond Borders - An intensive 12 day immersion experience that aims to provide a greater understanding of what it means to be Indigenous in Australia today.   
  • Red Earth – Cape York / Arnhem Land - The challenges faced by remote Aboriginal Australia are well documented. Isolated in a forgotten corner of the world, the Indigenous clans of Cape York in Far North Queensland are truly foreign and yet instantly relevant; this immersion gives students a chance to wade into that world and make a difference.   
  • Matthew 25 - Students will work with a number of social justice organisations in close proximity to Gregory Terrace and will be challenged to move from an observational to a relational approach with those people that find themselves on the margins of our society.    
  • Red Centre - This immersion aims to provide students with the opportunities for real life, community-based learning experiences in Central Australia. It fosters respect for the people, history and culture of Indigenous people.   
  • India - An encounter with a new culture, different ways of thinking, other systems for behaving and speaking, different values and lifestyles forces us to reassess the world and our place in it.   
  • The Career Pathways - Work Experience immersion aims to provide Year 10 students with an opportunity to explore and learn about the world of work.   
  • Photography - We’re all publishers now. Social media and many jobs need us to communicate visually, not just in words. The world’s most popular hobby has become a necessity.