Principal's Report

Student Leadership at Coburg High School

In this issue of the Coburg High School newsletter, you will read about several ways that students have recently been developing their leadership capabilities, through their involvement in the student leadership camp, the Alpine School of Student Leadership, the Standout Group, and various interschool sport teams.

The students who recently joined three of our teachers—Chloe, Kate and Dominic—at the student leadership camp made a significant commitment across that weekend to developing themselves as leaders, which is really pleasing because we know that so many of our students have enormous potential to become great leaders who can lead improvements not only within our school but also out in the wider world. One of the first steps to becoming more of a leader is to develop ourselves by clarifying our own beliefs and values and communicating those to others and at the leadership camp students had the opportunity to reflect on and discuss their views on leadership, and on what and who inspires them, and how they envisage leading changes in the world in future.

There are a wide range of official leadership positions for students at Coburg High School including Class Captains, House Captains, School Captains, Student Representative Council, and voting roles on the School Council. However, there are many informal ways in which students can and do develop their leadership capabilities on a daily basis at school, without necessarily having formal, up-front leadership positions. Some of the many and varied ways we regularly see students leading by example around the school are when students:

coach their sport team to perform at higher levels together and win a tough interschool match;
rally around and refocus the members of their team after losing a match;
take responsibility for planning out their group presentations with others for a class project;
stand up for a friend in need;
discourage a friend from teasing someone else or stop them from saying something they might regret;
email or speak with their teachers to propose an idea for a fun year-level event;
spot a visitor to the school who is lost and stop to guide them to the office;
start up a new student club that meets at lunchtimes and motivate others to join;
raise donations for a charity that can change the lives of others for the better.

Perhaps the most important person for students to learn to lead at high school is themselves. Learning how to gradually make our own choices and determine our own life directions is a critical part of growing up. First and foremost, we learn how to navigate and lead ourselves through the ups and downs of high school and the fairly rapid physical changes and the social and emotional turbulence of adolescence. We learn to lead others by first leading ourselves to recover quickly when something bad happens to us, by trying again when we don’t succeed, by asserting ourselves and gradually putting forward our own ideas and opinions, by learning to work out problems through talking about them with others, by listening to and learning from others, and by seeking help, guidance and mentoring from others who we trust.

We look forward to seeing what our emerging student leaders can achieve and what new ideas and initiatives they will lead here at school in future.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to the exciting opportunity for students who are studying Spanish to join our inaugural exchange program to our new Spanish sister school in the amazing city of Granada, Spain. There is more information in this newsletter about this rare opportunity to travel to Spain and to experience Spanish life and culture, to live with a Spanish family, and to visit our sister school there and see numerous famous sites.

We are also calling for families who are willing and able to host students who are visiting us from Spain. There are about 15 students who will be visiting us and they are very much looking forward to staying at our school and seeing Melbourne. We look forward to hosting them and showing them some of the best of life in Australia.

Stewart Milner

Principal

Coburg High School