Principal Communications, 30 September 2024

30 September 2024

Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome back to term 4. This term many students will focus on the leadership positions available to them in 2025. Leadership is always on my mind as we seek to build every student’s and every staff member’s leadership capacity. We believe leadership skills are the vehicle through which we can have influence, and our intention is to grow students who will be equipped to make a positive difference to the world both within our community and beyond our community.

Through embracing educational research and constantly refining our practices, teachers are making a positive difference to Exceptional Learning, Vibrant Community and Authentic Discipleship at Calvary. Staff have ongoing leadership and accountability conversations (both among themselves and with their line managers). For example, this term we look forward to the opportunity on Saturday 12th October to engage in the Global Leadership Summit hosted at Real Life Christian Church. We look forward to learning from a sample of the presentations made at the GLS in Chicago which will be streamed across the day.

Last term I shared with you the College Organisational Chart that has been updated to reflect some tweaks in staff leadership positions that future-proof our College, providing clear pathways of accountability in the world of educational compliance and regulation. This chart helps to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of who holds responsibility for what, and how all the different elements that make up our complex organisation work together smoothly.

What that communication did not share with you, is the very important way we work this out in our daily practice. Calvary is a future-focused College where leadership is distributed widely. Distributive leadership pushes leadership authority and its accompanying responsibility deeply into the organisation so that autonomy and collaboration are maximised. My role is to ensure we all have clarity around the mission and vision of the College and ‘what matters most’ at any given time. This allows our community to benefit richly from the skills and ideas of every person. It also helps us to work in agile and responsive ways as a situation arises. Through the speed of trust the organisation is agile. Agility, one of our core values, allows us to respond effectively to the complexities of our operating environment. And so, the reality is that we work as a team of teams.

Towards the end of term 3 after all the staff leadership positions for 2025 had been appointed and confirmed with our community, all teaching and learning staff were engaged in brief sessions where they identified their spot on the Organisational Chart and then were invited to identify all the teams they contribute to. Many were surprised to see the reality of how deeply and widely leadership is distributed in the College and my heart sings, as this was one of my goals five years ago when I took on the role of Principal. At Calvary we operate as a team of teams with everyone having voice and agency in our decision making.

For the last five years, I have been working with staff to build richer understanding of leadership and the capacity we each have to lead. The many opportunities to lead are clearer for staff as are the opportunities to reflect on and refine our leadership skills. With the core shared understanding of our vision and mission in place, newcomers to the staff very quickly find their feet in our culture of high performing teams. The beneficiaries are your children.

I look forward to sharing some thoughts with you next week about student leadership at Calvary. It too, is widely distributed and every student is invited repeatedly into opportunities to discover and develop their leadership capacity. We know that the future depends on people who have the skills to interact meaningfully with others including the capacity to influence key outcomes, thus shaping a better future for all. This lies at the heart our purpose as educators committed to the growth of the whole child via character formation along with the development of life skills and mastery of curriculum.

Yours sincerely

Cherylynne Gostelow