Junior School
Over the last few weeks our Year group meetings in the Junior School have focused on the idea of ‘excellence’.
Like many words such as fantastic, exceptional and awesome, excellent is often used these days to indicate something is merely quite good. You might say its meaning has been diluted through overuse. Looking further back, to describe something as excellent indicated a level of pre-eminence, that it was in some way outstanding – actually ‘standing out’ or being somehow distinguishable from the things around it.
The Semester 1 Junior School Academic Excellence Awards recognised boys who, through hard work and the application of their gifts and talents, achieved a level of pre-eminence in a particular subject area within their class. As teaching, learning and assessment were affected by the pandemic, we chose to prioritise three Key Learning Areas. The boys who demonstrated excellence in those areas are:
| Year 5 | Year 6 | |
| Religious Education | Andrew Ibrahim Peter Ghaleb Samuel Naccarella Lucas Viscuso Joshua Raheb Sarkis Francis | Oscar Midolla Daniel Basile Massimo Costa-Puntillo Zac Sewell Jake Azzi Dion Margaris |
| English | Ruben Rochester Nicholas Stojanovski Owen Leung Gabriel Stanton Alexander Kelly Maxwell Zanic | Tyron Garzaniti Marcus Svoboda Zachariah Bonett Heath Patterson Patrick Gittani Xavier Lorenzo |
| Mathematics | Raphael Susanto Orin Lo James Stewart Aidan Darlow Noah Young Logan Young | Nam Phan Gabriel Azar Christopher Yap Christopher Vega Ryan Kim Joseph Harb Marcus Dang |
The Blue Cap Award is presented to boys for “Letting their light shine brightly through active participation, perseverance and good character”. This is a very prestigious award as it celebrates many dimensions of excellence. One boy from each class was chosen, and those boys are:
| Year 5 | Year 6 |
Leon Burgio Richard Touma Marcello Romeo Zac Bechara Benjamin Proszenko Aarya Retnasingham | Christopher Mok Hugo Farrell Dylan Lapid Francesco Mazza Declan Giles Noah Capaldi |
At these assemblies, I invited boys to think about someone they can think of – a sportsperson, artist, family member, friend, teacher, community leader etc. – who could be described as ‘excellent’ in some way. I asked them to write down an idea for a way to show appreciation to that person for their excellence. I also asked each boy to write down something he would like to be excellent at during his lifetime, and something he would like to achieve excellence in this year. I am sure you would be interested to find out what your son wrote for each of these tasks! You could ask him to share the ideas next time he brings his PCP Journal home.
We acknowledged that although a small number of boys got to stand at the front with a certificate and be applauded, any such celebration leaves out a great many other boys who are also talented and worked hard, or indeed those who are less talented but worked really hard to achieve their personal best. Let us pay tribute to all those who work tirelessly without public recognition, for doing this shows great character. Receiving an award feels great, but the most fulfilling recognition of excellence comes from within oneself; let us also acknowledge that recognition from parents is very powerful and worth more than gold.
A final point is that magnanimity is an often-underrated virtue – to take joy in the joy and in the success of others is a great gift to the world.
Congratulations to all the boys named above, especially to our Blue Cap Award recipients.
God bless,
Ben Munday
Director of Junior School