Message from the Principal

Growing Our People

Growing Our People is one of the pillars of our Calrossy Strategic Plan 2025. Whilst our plan encompasses our entire community, student growth is a key indicator of a good school. Our core intention is to promote the explicit and holistic development and our students, to grow, mature and develop in every aspect of their lives, academically, socially, personally and spiritually.

Growing in confidence and resilience are important parts of the process. We seek that our students will learn, develop character and display important virtues as they mature through their time at school. Being a good student doesn’t just mean achieving high scores on tests. 

It means growing:

• a love of learning,
• a passion for knowledge
• a hunger to develop and grow academically, no matter their level of current achievement.

A growing student displays many of the characteristics below:

1. Trying hard and knowing that through hard effort improvement will occur. Growth mindset is a controversial concept but within the learner there is a belief that the ability to improve and achieve is not fixed.
2. Courage and risk-taking supports growth. There is impact in taking on challenges and being prepared to fail, in the determination that we learn from mistakes to eventually improve and succeed.
3. Organisation of oneself is important and this can be developed and learnt.
4. Consistency and persistence grow out of a willingness to practise, contributing to gradual improvement and ultimate success. 
5.  Setting goals helps in that improvement generally occurs over time, often step by step. 
6. Partnering with teachers and recognising them as allies creates great learning conditions. Teachers as partners create a relationship that supports student growth and achievement. 
7. Valuing the importance of education and being committed to doing as well as possible. 

A great satisfaction over time is to interact with the students, observing how much they have grown from earlier years, in so many ways. Growth is not just limited to the classroom and it is a fact that involvement in the cultural life of a school, a sense of belonging, playing sport and participation in co-curricular pursuits, often transfers to school learning. Some of our most successful Year 12 students have significantly grown during their time at Calrossy and so I look forward to serving our students in strategically planning how to enhance this growth and developing a climate and culture in which our students will grow, achieve and flourish in every aspect of their lives.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

David Smith

Principal