On Tuesday morning, we held our Scholar’s Assembly. The purpose of this assembly was to recognise the efforts and achievements of our young men based on their studies in the second semester last year. During the assembly we gave out four different types of awards. Firstly, students received a Gold, Silver or Bronze medallion based on their grades for each of their subjects. The second awards were given to students who managed to achieve an “A” grade in all their subjects. The third awards were Learning Gain Awards. These were awarded to students who had made significant improvement in their grades across the course of the year. The final awards were given to 26 senior students from last year who achieved an OP score between 1-5. Once again, last year’s senior cohort achieved above the State average in this area. I would like to congratulate every young man who received an award. Your persistence, effort and positive attitude is an example to all students within our community.

As is our tradition, we invited a past student from the College to present the awards and address the assembly. This year we had the pleasure of having Chris Stackpoole as our guest. An Old Boy of St Patrick’s College (2007), Chris has been engaged in significant studies in the area of law both nationally and internationally and has also assisted many in the Queensland communities through volunteering as a consultant with community groups.

Chris undertook the study of Law at the QUT in 2009. Since his graduation he has undertaken more studies and international work. Last year, Chris graduated as Vinerian Scholar from the Bachelor of Civil Law, the most prestigious law scholarship awarded by the University of Oxford. He is the second Queensland recipient of the Vinerian Scholarship, which has been awarded to 16 Australians since it was established in the late 1700s.

Chris is a currently a solicitor in the Dispute Resolution Practice at King & Wood Mallesons, Australia’s leading commercial law firm. He specialises in complex commercial litigation and has been widely published in legal journals and practitioner texts. He also retains an interest in international affairs, having been a former Australian diplomat advising on multilateral policy and international security. He has worked in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and volunteered in Ghana, Cambodia and Thailand assisting in the areas of public policy.

In his address, Chris could have spoken about his many achievements, but instead he spoke to our young men about the values of aiming for goals and staying true to your core values. He gave some of his life experiences in this area. I am confident that everyone in the audience found his address to be interesting and worthwhile to their own contexts.

During the Assembly I spoke to the young men about the pitfalls of growing up in what appears to be an age of celebrity. I mentioned that the internet and social media gives us access to such a diverse range of cultures and people across the globe. Whilst there are many advantages to this, there are also some pitfalls. The age of celebrity allows people, often with limited expertise, to assert their own thoughts to others with a sense that they are an authority on a subject.In essence what is being expressed is an opinion rather than expertise based on research and evidence. These people are often referred to as “influencers and bloggers”. Their success criteria for this role appears to be based on the number of followers that they can amass, rather than their knowledge and expertise on matters that they might comment on. That is not to say that there are some experts who use such channels to pass on valuable information. The problem is that many of our young men who use sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc usually do not have the skills to work out who are the experts or are drawn to such people because of their celebrity status based on their looks, sporting reputation or simply the fact that they have accumulated a large number of followers.

Personally, I have two concerns about this. The first is that we risk “dumbing down” our communities because too much of our time and efforts is on things that are about populous views and matters and subjects such as body image, relationships etc are discussed at very superficial levels that can be damaging to young people.

It concerns me greatly that many of our young men not only follow such people on social media sites but, in some instances, have also accumulated a large number of followers themselves. It would be an interesting exercise for parents to ask their son how many followers they have and how many of them have they actually met. Another pitfall that stands out for me is that social media sites have allowed young men to interact with anyone, and often with people that they have not met before.

Secondly, I am concerned that young people can become sensitised to dealing with strangers and how they share private details about themselves, their families, friends etc. We are very clear about the notion of “stranger danger” when dealing with others in person, but notion of safety and privacy seems to be forgotten when interacting on-line. Your son will, no doubt, tell you that he only chats with the group of friends and the information stays in that group. As a school leader over a number of years, I can tell you that this is rarely the case. Your son might follow this rule, but there is a good chance that others in the group do not. Likewise, they will tell you that photographs that they have sent of themselves or others on Snapchat are not kept recorded. But this is only if the receiver has not taken a screen shot of them. This can be devastating for any young person who might be lured into sexting. Also, if he has hundreds of followers, there is an excellent chance that he does not know all of them. As importantly, the question could also be about what he is putting out there on his story and other shared information that attracts large numbers of people.

I note with interest that the Queensland government is currently looking to legislate against instances where such photographs might be distributed without consent of the other party. I would love to say that this is not the case with our young men, but I would be quite confident that this is not the case with some of our students.

I would really urge parents to have an honest and supportive discussion with their children about what types of accounts they have on social media and their knowledge of the people with whom they are communicating. Also, how they know the person that is communicating with them is really that person if they do not know them. This also applies to some forms of gaming such as Fortnite where there is the opportunity to share communication.

During this weekend we compete against Marist College Ashgrove in AFL, Cricket and Volleyball. Our AFL games for Years 8-9 and Years 10-12 are at Sandgate Hawks Club tonight and our Cricket and Volleyball games for Years 9-12 are at home with the other teams playing at Marist. Best of luck to all teams.

Live Jesus in our Hearts!

Mr Chris Mayes – College Principal

Celebrating achievement at the Scholar’s Assembly

This week we were lucky enough to welcome back 24 students from the cohort of 2018 who achieved and OP of between 1 and 5, so that we could celebrate their achievements as a community at the Scholar’s Assembly.They deserved our recognition and it was gratifying to see the way they were celebrated by the community. It was obvious that they will enjoy every future success seeing the confidence in which they carried as they smiled and held their heads high in front of the audience.

For all of the other students that achieved recognition at the assembly, congratulations. The community hopes to see you enjoy every success into the future and we aim for more and more students to achieve recognition at each opportunity. One point I made however, was that the education we want for our students here is not solely measured by academic awards – it goes much further than that. I have included below an excerpt from my opening address to explain this point:

I ask that each student takes some time to think about what it is we are celebrating and acknowledging today – improvement or very high achievement in subject results. This is an important thing to do. However, I am hoping that you recognise that whilst each subject result indicates your level of knowledge and skill in an individual subject, there is much more to your schoolwork than that.

The pursuit of academic results goes further than the celebration we will see today. Whether you will grace this stage one time, many times, or not at all, your time here at the College must become an opportunity for you to grow as a critical thinker and lifelong learner. You must become someone who can communicate, be organised, meet deadlines, and perform under pressure. School is not an easy place and assessments can be stressful, homework can be tedious, and lessons at times, may not seem that interesting. Your responsibility is that you learn how to handle these challenges, and to do this means you need to be an active participant in the learning process. You cannot just sit passively in class with one eye on the clock and the other out the window and expect your body to soak in knowledge like a sponge – that process is called osmosis and it doesn’t apply to a young man sitting passively in class. Your time here at the College is an opportunity that you shouldn’t take for granted or pass up.

You are surrounded by teachers that are invested in your outcomes and that provide ongoing support and guidance in a way that you will not receive after you graduate. The support and guidance you get here will not be matched in the world you graduate into. So rather than tell yourself again that you are going to work harder and be a better man of learning tomorrow, next week or next year, look at your time here as a chance to develop your ability to get the knowledge and skills you need to do the best that you can.

Realise that your work and participation in the learning process is not only an opportunity to achieve your targets in your subjects, but more importantly it could be your chance to develop your knowledge in subjects you may study further, be an effective communicator, think critically, collaborate with others, and contribute in a positive way to society. Don’t miss this opportunity while you are here because it’s unlikely it will be always be at your fingertips the way it is here at our College.

What should we be seeing with our young Men of Learning, right now?

By this time of the term, parents should be seeing the following things as our students engage in the learning process:

• they are tired, but their cognitive capacity and alertness is coming back after the summer break
• they should be completing regular homework – following my golden rule – that their year level indicates approximately how much homework they should be completing (for students in years 7-12). For example, a student in Year 9 should be completing around 9 hours of homework each week
• they have a Student Planner that is being used consistently, with assessment dates and task written in and that is guiding their work each night
• they know where to find their due work assessment items and all the items are recorded on page 6 of the student planner
• they know their teacher’s name for each subject.

Parents – maybe you could start the weekend with a check of the above points?! If you have any concerns about how your son has started in any of his classes, I encourage you to get in contact with his teacher. We value partnership and communication in working together to support each young man.

Mr Troy Schultz – Dean of Teaching and Learning

Wednesday of this week marked the anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations, made in Australia’s Parliament in Canberra by the Prime Minister at the time and on behalf of us all.

In this event Australia took a moment to recognise the terrible treatment of Australia’s First People through one particular government policy. The Apology also reminds us, that as a nation, Australia has not treated Indigenous people with justice.

We make our Acknowledgement of Country at every major College event, even sometimes at the football yet often we don’t stop and think about what it means. At the same time though it is a statement by our community, by all of us.

In the Acknowledgement we recognise that this land belongs to the Turrbal people. We name them, sometimes we talk about their history. What are we saying by this? – we are reminding ourselves that nobody asked the Turrbal if we could be here, this land was taken from them.

In the Acknowledgement we say that we ‘pay our respects’ – in this we are saying that we honour the traditional owners and we are sorry for what has happened in the past.

The last part of our acknowledgement is saying something about us. When something bad has happened we say “sorry”, we are sad for the people affected, we understand that there is pain. We can even feel guilty that things have happened.

Sorrow and guilt by themselves are useless emotions but here they have a point. We are reminding ourselves that our history is not all that it could be. That we are uncomfortable with how things are – there is injustice and there is hurt.

When we are uncomfortable then there is a possibility that change might happen. Things might be made better because we don’t like feeling uncomfortable. Here at St Patrick’s we talk about building right relationships, when we feel uncomfortable we recognise that our relationships are not right and we need to do something about this situation.

Our Acknowledgement is like the National Apology it is there to remind us of what the truth is and it is there to make us feel uncomfortable about that. We do this deliberately because this can then spur us on to work for Justice and for reconciliation as a nation, as St Patrick’s Community and as each individual person here.

I invite you to spend a couple of moments to make your own Acknowledgement in your heart. A time to remember; to be aware; to say sorry; to commit ourselves to work for right relationships.

Please get involved –

• Next Tuesday we are holding a Green and Gold Day to raise money to support our brother school – Ignatius Park College in Townsville. The community there has been significantly impacted by the floods.
• Emergency Food Packs for Sandbag – St Patrick’s has been collecting food items that can be put together into emergency food packs to support families in need in our local community. Please contribute items to the Collection via your son’s House.
• Paddy’s Van Ministry has started again, get involved. Contact Mr McGoldrick to look at ways you can become involved in the Paddy’s Van and its work.
• Recycling – talk with your son about the importance of recycling and re-think the kind of packaging that you use for food, etc.
• Wednesday morning 8:00–8:30am, Mass is celebrated in the College Chapel. This is a great opportunity for a little quiet in your busy week.

LENTEN PRESENTATION: Save the date! Sunday 10 March. Sr Mel Dwyer will be returning to the Sandgate Parish for a Lenten Presentation ‘The Journey to the Cross and Beyond – Exploring the real focus of Lent, our call to conversion and the invitation of Jesus to a new life.’ This will be held in the Sandgate Parish Hall at 2.30pm. All Welcome!

Mr Tim Kenny – Dean of Identity