From the Principal

While very taxing – and we hope we don’t have to revisit it any time soon – one of the positives of Semester 1’s All Saints’ @ Home experience was the lived example it provided of our shared vulnerability. 

Throughout that time (and there were only 17 days of online learning, although it felt so very much longer than that to me!), I am sure we all – as teachers, students and parents – experienced uncertainty and emotional exposure in the face of risk, as we stepped into the unknown. 

Such exposure and vulnerability take courage for all of us, and we particularly want to model for our young people the importance of being brave to step up when we don't know and can't control the outcome. 

That notion of our shared vulnerability – our courage to be vulnerable together as a community – is something we would like to emphasise and develop further, as a staff and for our students, as we look to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19.

And who better to listen to on the topic of vulnerability than Brené Brown?

Vulnerability, says Brown, is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change – a much needed mindset, we believe, in our VUCA* world.

Innovation – which sees us having an idea, failing, reiterating, failing, reiterating and so on – requires the confidence to fail, to ‘flearn’ as we say at ASC, for it is indeed in the failing that we learn so much.

And to confidently fail obviously requires a safe environment.

So, Brené Brown encourages us to be a community with a great tolerance for vulnerability or, she says, we can’t expect great things.

Further, vulnerability is not only the genesis of innovation, says Brown, it is also the key to our connectedness as a community – the birthplace of love, belonging, courage, creativity, empathy and authenticity.

When we have that confidence in our connectedness, we have the courage to be imperfect – to try and to fail – and that is the life source for our community of learners.

Having the courage to demonstrate our vulnerability – to try and fail, and try again – is a gift for our young people and for our learning community for, as Brown says:

“Courage is contagious. A critical mass of brave leaders is the foundation of an intentionally courageous culture. Every time we are brave with our lives, we make the people around us a little braver and our organisations bolder and stronger.” ​

*VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous

Ms Belinda Provis

Principal