14 October 2024

Dear Parents and Carers

Earlier this term, I provided you with a comment on how staff leadership operates at the College, explaining the future-focused 21st Century model of widely and deeply distributed leadership we use. I committed to sharing with you this week how this is applied to student leadership.

Leadership is a significant focus for us in our vision to ‘grow the whole child’ as we seek to equip our young people to build their capacity to influence others for the common good. This term some students have already been engaged in the process of seeking to secure positional leadership through taking on roles as House Captains, College Captains and Prefects. What is important for us is that ALL students continue to be encouraged to examine and develop their personal capacity to lead. Positional leadership is not the only opportunity to build leadership capacity at Calvary – every Calvary student has many opportunities designed to grow their influence in positive ways.

We see in most very young children the desire for independence and control or agency in their world. I am sure you, too, have had many moments parenting your young children where they show clearly that their will does not always align with what we want them to do! I am thinking about the tantrums of toddlers, the moments where a teen expresses frustration at the often wise limitations we adults seek to impose on their wishes for total freedom or unbridled agency.

Growing student agency (their skill, confidence and willingness to work with us actively in shaping their daily experiences at Calvary) helps students achieve independence. We want them to enjoy increasing independence across their P-12 journey. To us this looks like them making increasingly wise choices and good decisions that lead to their increasing influence for good over their peers and in their families and wider communities. This is our goal: to grow fearlessly authentic lifelong learners who will influence their world for good. A lofty goal indeed; but one about which I and Calvary staff are passionate. We are committed to working with you to ensure that together we bring out the best in our young people.

My hope is that in the coming weeks and months you will find wisdom in the blogs from our student development team and in the communications from our learning leadership team. We are relentlessly focused on what is best for our students. We appreciate your partnership with us. We may not always agree on the best way forward but it is important that we remain committed to respectful dialogue as we seek to work together for the future of our children.

Yours sincerely

Cherylynne Gostelow