DEPUTY PRINCIPAL'S REPORT 

Our Year 7 students enjoyed their first Reflection Day last week. It proved to be a wonderful, reflective experience for students and staff. The theme of the Reflection Day was “I am God’s Creation” and students explored identity, friendships and communication. The session about Identity was particularly interesting and is something that all students could reflect on.

Our identity is developed as we grow up relating to particular people in particular places. We might identify as part of our family because that is what we have learned to become. Within the family we have a particular identity - child, daughter, brother, uncle. We might identify as Australian/Irish/German/Fijian because we are citizens of that country. We might identify as a Wiradjuri person because of our country as an indigenous person. If we join a sports team we take on “team member” as part of our identity. When we join a workplace we take on our occupation or job as part of our identity. These are things that are usually easy to describe and easy to see and they are all important parts of our identity. 

We each have a particular identity as members of the St Mary MacKillop College community by virtue of the fact that we are students or staff members. Part of that identity has to do with obvious things like attending school each day, following our timetables, participating in school activities and wearing the uniform. These things are all important signs of our identity as members of this specific community; they are observable and we could describe them as being our ‘outside identity’. Another aspect of our identity is what sort of people we are, our characteristics and strengths. This identity is demonstrated through the way we conduct ourselves in relation to others, whether we live out the school values of dignity, respect, compassion, reverence, forgiveness and generosity. This could be described as our ‘inner identity’. To flourish we need to have a sense of both our outer and inner identities. To be engaged and contributing members of the St Mary MacKillop College community we need to pay attention to our outer identity as well as the inner identity - one needs the other to be complete.