Principal Communications, 5 February 2024
Dear Parents and Carers
Leadership – building leadership capabilities across our Calvary family - is a key priority.
Your child has every opportunity to grow in their understanding that:
- Leadership is influence.
- You get to choose how you use that influence.
- You can grow your influence.
- You can use your influence to make a difference in the world.
This week is a special week for those who have been chosen within our community for positional leadership. Students on both campuses who are serving the community as House Captains, Prefects and College Captains will be honoured in our assemblies as they each receive their leadership badges and make their public commitment to lead well at Calvary across 2024. In this 40th anniversary year, as part of our ongoing celebrations we have invited people who held positions of student leadership in the past to present our 2024 leaders with their badges. This is a way we honour our past as we build our future.
It is also important to us that all in our community recognise their opportunities in the invitation we extend to each of them to grow their leadership capacity. “You don’t need a badge to be a leader”. Identifying as a leader comes down to a simple three things we can all achieve if we wish:
- Grow your ‘self’ – this is about leaning in to reflecting on and growing your character and the character virtues framework is a good place to begin this journey.
- Grow others – true leaders look for opportunities to support others to grow and ‘shine’. A true leader is an encourager of others and a multiplier of leadership across the community.
- Make a difference – this is often best achieved by seeking ways to serve the community – make our vibrant community a better place.
Any student engaged in the above three activities can nominate to be recognised as a leader. In most cases it is our lovely staff who notice first the leadership capacity in our young people and the staff become the encouragers of emerging leadership.
At Calvary we have designed and developed our leadership development distinctive to suit our context rather than simply purchasing an off the shelf ‘leadership program’. We invite you to monitor and work with us to develop leadership capabilities in your child and their peers. Who your child is becoming is the measure of our College’s success that we prize most highly.
Over the past few weeks in our parent information evenings several of you have heard me say how very proud I am of our staff as our top ATAR score from Year 12 in 2023 was an impressive 99.65. (When you know that the highest possible score is 99.95, you will appreciate what a feat it is for our student to have only 0.3% of the state’s ATAR eligible students score ahead of him!).
Our staff, P-12, design exceptional learning opportunities for all students, including those who aspire to exceptional and impressive ATAR scores. And you have also heard me say that when I think about the young man who achieved this impressive result, I am actually more proud of the young man I know him to be. I am more proud of his character and faith growth, of his impact on community and I look forward to seeing what he does and who he becomes across the next decade. This is the true measure of the impact of a 13 year Calvary education on him.
Who your child is and who they are becoming is the measure that will reflect the return on your investment in a distinctively different education that only Calvary Christian College can provide.
Yours sincerely
Cherylynne Gostelow
Principal & CEO