Pedagogy & Innovation Report

Last Tuesday, we held our High Achievers assembly to acknowledge those students who have achieved outstanding results over the past semester. Students from our Class of 2019 returned to the College to be acknowledged for their incredible achievements, in addition to our students in the junior and senior schools.

Our Academic Captain for 2020, Kiara Katiforis, prepared and delivered an eloquent speech, and there is a section that I would like to share with you all.

Our College theme for this year is "Flourishing as Presentation".
To flourish, means to grow, to develop, to improve.
When you see someone flourishing, they are the best version of themselves. At PCW our students flourish in a range of areas: sport, the arts, social justice, leadership, languages, humanities, science, and maths, the arts…
But we also flourish in the way that we care for one another, and look out for each other when times get difficult. Our community flourishes because of the collective strength that we share.
But the act of flourishing does not happen overnight. It takes practiced discipline, good choices and a will and desire to improve.
Kiara Katiforis, High Achievers Assembly, 2020.

Kiara really captured what "Flourishing as Presentation" means. It is a state of mind that demands discipline, commitment and hard work; and the great thing is that anybody is capable of doing these things. It simply requires practice.

When we look upon the great successes of our students, what we don’t see is the hard work and discipline that led to this single point in time when they cross the stage. We don’t see the people that supported them along the way. We don’t see the culmination of good choices and habits, the dedication and practice. We don’t see the mistakes made, we don’t see the bouncing back and tenacity when the work gets challenging. All we see is the end point. This final destination is important, but it is the journey where student growth happens.

I would like to extend my congratulations to all of the academic high achievers and congratulate them on the work they did behind the scenes to be the best version of themselves.

The exciting part about these is that it gives us time to stop and think about the areas that we need to improve upon in order to be the best version of ourselves and with time, patience and dedication, these skills and habits can be developed in all students.

Simon Gitson

Director of Pedagogy & Innovation