The emerging theme of 2020 is, for me, gratitude. Here are four things for which I am grateful.
I am grateful for simple pleasures: a school filled with happy noise; visits with family; shared meals with friends; the freedom to sit on a bench and watch the waves. I am grateful for having a job (and such an amazing one!). My friends in Melbourne and London and the US are envious of our success and I am grateful every day for the good luck of being in Sydney.
I am grateful for how well our girls have been handling the demands of 2020. We ask our Year 12s to lead the school, and they have done so, setting an example for the younger girls of how to deal with disappointment and uncertainty. Where some young people are complaining about what they can’t do, our girls have mourned their losses, picked themselves up and asked instead what they can do – and this has made all the difference.
I am grateful for Queenwood parents, who have offered us such support this year. We are in an easier phase of the pandemic right now but events throughout this year have made high demands on parents – whether supervising little ones during remote learning, caring for their own parents who are vulnerable and sometimes inaccessible, or coping with complex professional demands. Yet Queenwood parents have been unfailingly supportive and I value in full measure the trust which has been shown towards the School, which has in turn been of immense assistance to us throughout all the twists and turns. That trust has extended beyond COVID-related issues, too. Just last week, for instance, we had a tremendous response when we asked Junior School parents to support our stance on social media use – a response that would be the envy of many schools, which too often struggle to persuade parents to take such issues seriously.
I am grateful to my colleagues. They have met the demands of this year with creativity, commitment and great professionalism. We really are fortunate to have teachers and staff whose expertise and great care for the girls can drive us through even a pandemic without missing a beat.
We are so blessed – in our location, our opportunities, our support, our resources – that it would be easy for us as a community to become complacent, and complacency can degenerate into entitlement.
But that is the antithesis of our mission. Our purpose is to educate young women who will become a force for good in the world, so where does the desire to be an agent of change come from? It must be rooted in a sense of gratitude, which sharpens the sense of justice, which feeds the motivation to serve, which ultimately inspires us, as individuals and as a community, to make a difference and leave the world a better place.
Can I suggest that in the next few days, over dinner, you take a few moments to talk as a family about the things for which you are grateful? If we’re going to make the world a better place, why not start now?
Elizabeth Stone
Principal