Principal 

End of Year

We are currently in the second week of the Flying Start Program for 2022. It has enabled our students to meet each of their subject teachers, know their classrooms and locker spaces and to familiarise themselves with the requirements of the new year level. Importantly, it has also been an opportunity for a student to confirm their homeroom or tutor teacher. It is our hope that your son moves into the summer break knowing what is required of him with his work next year, aware of the staff ad students he will be most directly involved with and feeling excited about what lies ahead.

We have had a few students from other schools join Years 8-12 during Flying Start; we warmly welcome them and their families to our College. 

College Assembly

A full College Assembly, with all available students given our Class of 2021 have already finished, was held on Monday of this week. It was the first time we have gathered the two campuses since March and it was wonderful to do so. The 2021 House awards were presented, along with the Commissioning of James Wills (Class of 2021), who will be taking up as a Lasallian Volunteer at the Balgo Indigenous Community in Western Australia. A special tribute was paid to our outgoing Year 12s with the repeat of the PowerPoint used at the virtual Valete earlier this term and the College Band played some very upbeat numbers.

At this assembly I had the opportunity to address our Community for the final time given that I am shortly to complete my time as Principal. Given below for your interest are some edited extracts from that speech:

This is the final time that I will be speaking to you as a whole school community, as I prepare to move on from the College at the end of this year. And what a year it has been for us:

A Pandemic with Lockdowns, remote learning and vaccinations

An Amalgamation to become a dual campus College

The passing of a loved one in Rhys Gillard

Plus, all the other many stories each of us and our families have within us.

We need to live with memory and imagination

I too pay my respects to the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation and recognise their elder’s past, present and emerging.

One of the great hallmarks of indigenous culture is the preservation of the past through storytelling. The role of the Elders is to ensure that the stories of their nation live on in generations to come. A Wominjeka tree is a special one. Through millennia at Bayside Melbourne, such a tree was a place of welcome from the Bunurong people to other nations who would travel through this area. They would tell their story to these strangers. They had, and still have, an enormous respect for the past and try to make sense of the future by doing so.

We too need to live with both memory and imagination

One of the conundrums of schools lies in the fact that we all want to prepare you, as students, for the future and, yet, also wish to give you a basic building block of strong faith and morality that has a foundation in the past. Our College does have an essential building block called Catholicity which is enhanced by our Lasallian heritage.

In looking at the first part of this conundrum, Aristotle once said:

The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces people who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.

We need to live with memory and imagination

I say this because we are all at this College for a fixed amount of time. None of us were here in 1938 when St Bede’s opened 84 years ago and none of us will be at the College in 84 years’ time. We all have our contribution to make, a contribution that is built on the back of those students, staff and families who have gone before us.

And that is the great strength of St Bede’s.

When the De La Salle Brothers tried to find a place in Bayside Melbourne to act as a Boarding School, because they could no longer house all the Boarders from De La Salle College in Malvern, they found a spot on Beach Road, Mentone. In those days Mentone was this most remote place from Melbourne; in fact, people from Melbourne used to holiday here in the 1930s and 1940s.

Countless brothers, lay staff, students and families have made their mark on this school since those days. They have looked to the future with confidence, good planning and trust in God whilst remembering where they have come from.

Your family does the same. They plan for the future and yet celebrate anniversaries and birthdays to remember the past.

Your family lives with memory and imagination

If we started to collect stories about St Bede’s from each person in this Stadium today, we would gather thousands of them. 

We have staff members with us who have been here for over 40 years. We have some students with us who have been here for five days, and everything in between……………………..

…………………………………………..Staff and students come and go, programs, plans and procedures come and go (even amalgamations) but the essential ethos we try to live out remains the same. We do not have a mortgage on being a good school, there are many good schools, but we do have a unique story, which is what sets us apart from others. 

Like the Bunurong people we need to ensure we tell and live out our Lasallian story with fervour, passion and in the words of our Founder,

“Zeal”………………………………………..

………………………I recently added up the number of years I have been associated with a Lasallian school; I was surprised to see it reached 33 years, which included my time as a student. I love my job for many reasons, based on working with students, families and staff. Essentially, I have an incredible respect for St John Baptist de la Salle because he saw young people in desperate need and did something about it. He was practical, passionate and committed. From those humble beginnings in France arose thousands of schools, Colleges, universities and social outreach works around the world – including Mentone.

He never wavered from a belief in God, whilst imagining much brighter prospects for the young people in his care through the schools he founded. He did not try to change who students were. He understood the background of each one and respected their history.

I know that every student here today is their own person and deserves the right to not change who they are, or what gifts they have.

St John Baptist de la Salle lived with Memory and Imagination

To all students here today, I wish you well in the years to come and hope that you remember your time at the College with great affection and happiness. In the many schools I have worked in or visited over the journey, I have not met a more natural or more good-willed group of students; you are credit to your families.

To the staff of the College, thank you for all you have done for this cohort and the many who have gone before them. There are certainly times when we have been tested through the current pandemic, the death of students and staff and the many challenges around child safety and evolving curriculum. Your genuine care and zeal would have the Founder smiling with pride.

To the De La Salle brothers, I say thank you for educating someone like myself, a boy from Bentleigh who came from a family without many resources and yet was able to be educated by your schools and enjoy a fulfilling career within them.

May the joy of the upcoming Christmas season be known by all of us.

When we consider our own memories and imagination and that of the College

We need look no further than our College blazer pocket to see the challenge we set ourselves: 

Advent and Christmas

I wish you and your family every blessing for the Advent Season and a beautiful experience of Christmas. May it be a time of joy, connection and love for your family.

Open Day 2022

Per Vias Rectas

(By Right Paths)

John Finn

Principal