The teacher simply wants the best for their student. By Year 12, we would expect that the student recognises their role in changing the narrative, to take responsibility, submit the work and of course the next lesson is a new beginning.
One of the pillars of a Queenwood education is independence. We want to encourage our girls to be independent in mind and spirit, to develop into women prepared to chart their own course, seek truth and live courageously.
Empathy is what sets humans apart from other species and robots. It allows us to relate to other people and their experiences, helps us understand how others may be feeling and contributes to us being compassionate. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that empathy is an ‘antidote to righteousness’ and is key to addressing the polarisation that threatens to undermine democracies. In addition, so-called ‘soft skills’ are increasingly recognised as essential to both personal and professional success, with research emerging to suggest that empathy is essential to developing the capacity to cooperate and collaborate.
Back in February as the school year commenced, Ms Stone set the girls a challenge: to be a little bit more kind, every day. In order to encourage this theme of kindness, the Year 12s set up a Google form, where all girls from the Senior School could submit anonymous stories about acts of kindness that they had seen or experienced from their time at Queenwood, big or small.
The term is only a few days old and already we are in top gear. A notable event in this first week was the meeting on Wednesday for any interested Senior School girl to discuss her thoughts, suggestions and questions about sexual assault and harassment.
In keeping with our Social Justice intentions of ensuring a greater commitment and understanding of important issues that impact on society, on individuals, and on us as a community it is important that recognition and acknowledgement are informed, genuine and substantial. Having Ms Abdile here addressing our students gave substance to the occasion. Her powerful poetry together with her account of her journey to Australia, sojourn on Christmas Island, and her experience as a refugee served as a reminder to us all of our shared humanity.
Research into theories of motivation tells us that goal setting is essential to performance, and that the best goals take feedback and early results into account, while focusing on learning rather than performance.
Developing agency, the capacity to act independently and make our own free choices, is essential to a fulfilling and purposeful life, but it is hard. Throwing around slogans – ‘you can do anything’, ‘life is what you make it’ – won’t take us far (even if there is a grain of truth). More honest and more helpful is to acknowledge the difficulties, address the barriers and then set high expectations.
I have been a teacher for almost two decades yet I am still stumped when it comes to my own children – aged 6 and 8. Over cereal this morning I was asked: to list the most venomous spiders in the world by region; how to find ‘C’ on a piano keyboard; who is the best Australian author; and whether you tie soccer boot laces differently to school shoe laces.
I also asked the girls who approached me this week whether they had had any explicit discussion of consent at home, and hardly any of them had. This is anecdotal, of course, but I’m sure it’s not because their parents don’t think it’s important. Trust me, though: your girls want to talk about this. Even though it’s ‘cringey’ for everybody involved, they really want to talk about this.
A few years ago I was astonished when a girl in Year 11 (not Queenwood) showed me her mobile phone use statistics. Her Screentime data for the past week showed she had spent 55 hours on her phone, of which 35 hours were on Snapchat. So on top of her school day and study schedule, she was clocking 8 hours a day, 7 days per week, on her phone. And her Snapchat commitment alone was the equivalent of a full-time job.