Year 12 Leaders

On Wednesday 15th February, the Greater Shepparton Secondary College Year 12 leaders had the privilege of attending the “Leadership Induction Day”. The aim of this day was to come together for the first time as House and Neighbourhood captains to develop our leadership teams and develop a deeper understanding of how we want to lead the school community in 2023. 

After kicking off the day with some team building activities, we were lucky enough to receive a presentation from Rob McCartney, the Head of Football for the Hawthorn Hawks. Rob grew up in regional Victoria, and spent time in Shepparton as a teacher, and eventually Principal of Guthrie Street Primary School.  Rob walked us through what he’s learnt about being a leader throughout his time in leadership positions, from a school captain in Nhill all the way to managing the Hawks. 

He also stepped us through a similar process he does with his team, having us discuss traits from other leaders which inspire us and decide which traits were integral to our leadership. We concluded our time with Rob by starting our own “Aspirational Statements” which will help us draw back to what kind of leader we want to be and what impact we are going to leave on GSSC.

Already thinking about our goals, with thanks to Rob, the group then worked together to make our 2023 leadership statement. We worked in small groups to come up with what leadership meant to us, then joined as a whole to find the most common traits. With these in mind we created our 2023 leadership statement:

"At GSSC, we aspire to be the best possible leaders we can be. We achieve that by respecting and motivating those around us; demonstrating strong character, by encouraging and showing genuine care for our school community".

We will refer back to this statement as we continue to work throughout the year to keep us on track to leaving an impact on the school, of which we are proud.

Our homework before the induction day was to complete the Belbin Team Roles test, a quiz which helps you understand where your strengths can be utilised in a team setting. In our neighbourhood groups, we put our results on a chart to see what roles our team was strong in and where our weaknesses were. 

We then discussed what tasks we should be doing to best work in our team and how the Belbin roles relate back to school duties, such as running assemblies and sports days. The test was a fun way to learn a bit more about ourselves, and help us know how to better assign tasks within our team as the year goes on. 

We concluded the day with an insightful discussion with Mark Corrie. Mark spoke to us about the meaning and importance of the Acknowledgement of Country. He helped us understand what country means, both to us and the traditional custodians of the land. He encouraged us to step up and acknowledge country in a meaningful way. Mark urged us to take care and pride in the diversity of our school, and said if we keep taking care of our community, Shepparton will be a role model to the rest of Australia on how to live in a multicultural society. 

We are so grateful for the opportunities given through the Leadership Induction Day. The time together helped us build a sense of pride in our leadership team, as well as a collective understanding of how we intend to lead GSSC in 2023. 

We would like to thank both Rob McCartney and Mark Corrie for giving their time and wisdom to us, we gained so much from both presentations. We would like to thank our college leadership staff for providing this opportunity, especially to Tom Robinson who spent the day with us as a fun and encouraging mentor.  

The Year 12 Leadership Team now feels prepared to take up our roles as well as we can, and can’t wait to work with everyone soon!