Principal
From the Desk of the Principal
Dear Parents and Carers, Staff and Students, and Friends of Mount Alvernia College,
Thought for the week:
There is an appointed time for everything.
And there is a time for every event under heaven -
A time to give birth, and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
- Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2
As the year moves inexorably to a close, this quotation from Ecclesiastes popped into my head. The recent awards ceremonies – College Awards and Sports Awards - herald the end of another year. Next week we farewell the graduating students of 2018 and, just two weeks later, the academic year comes to an end.
This year, our focus has been on Enabling Excellence in Girls’ Education, and I would believe that we have been very successful in doing this in so many areas. As I highlighted in my Awards Night speech and at College Assembly last week, girls who excel do so not in just one area of college life, but in many. The discipline associated with academic excellence flows beautifully into the sporting arena, and it is no secret that students involved in the arts also excel in the other areas. From a community perspective, students who are involved in giving to others show excellence in the other areas of college life.
As I look out from my office each day, I have the opportunity to watch La Foresta flourish. Yesterday morning, during Staff Mass I watched two young women wandering through the gardens observing and smelling the roses – literally and figuratively. Such a wonderful opportunity to engage with nature is not to be taken for granted, and I know that parents and visitors alike enjoy wandering through on their way to Reception. I love the shocked look on some faces as this is not what a school usually looks like!
Mount Alvernia College is unashamedly different in so many ways, and I know that the students who will leave us this coming week will take that difference and make their mark on the world that, in our contemporary times, is sorely in need of the Franciscan values of love, simplicity, service, peace, joy, compassion, trust, and respect.
They will, I am certain, be exemplars of what the founder of the Missionary Sisters, Elizabeth Hayes, had in mind when she began the Order, that is, to give young women a well-rounded, truly Christian education which would develop the whole person.
I look forward to seeing many of you at our Graduation Mass and Final Assembly next week.
Peace and all good things
Take care
Kerrie
tuitk@mta.qld.edu.au
