2018 Awards Assembly, practising and success

Last Thursday 29 November, our Year 6-10 students, staff and members of their families gathered in the Savio Centre for our 2018 Awards Ceremony. This ceremony recognizes the academic and personal achievements of our students who have achieved excellence in learning and in leadership this year.

The Characteristic of Stickability

In my address to the gathering, I spoke about the characteristics of successful students and their capacity to persist – their ‘stickability’. Successful students don’t abandon something because it’s too hard and they don’t look for the quick fix – just knowing the answer.

If students commit to the journey of deep learning, they will experience incremental spurts of new insight, new knowledge and higher skill achievement – their brains will make leaps in the process.

The Process of Mastery

I reiterated that good students become very good students because they practise and keep on practising in order to become masters. Mastery is a process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through the regime of practice. The most successful path to mastering anything is to practise for the sake of the practice itself, not for the result.

Masters love the practice and because they just love it, they get better. And the better they get, the more they enjoy the practice and the more passionate they become. It’s an upward spiral. Students who choose to work hard and practise no matter what their level of intelligence will ultimately be the most successful in life.

Congratulations to Awards Recipients

Our Awards Ceremony last week was a wonderful recognition of our students’ success in 2018. They recognized persistent endeavor, consistent diligence and achievement within the process mastery by our students. I congratulate all students who were recipients of awards and nominations for awards.

Ms Beth Gilligan - K-10 Teaching & Learning Team