ANZAC Traditions

It's wonderful to see our school's traditions establishing, growing and changing over time.  One of the most important traditions is our ANZAC Ceremony at school and our attendance at the Dawn Service at Coolum RSL on ANZAC Day morning.

Our Student Leaders do a fabulous job of leading the Ceremony which is usually held the day before ANZAC Day. All the classes make gorgeous wreaths and two children proudly represent their class to lay it at the base of the flag pole. In our first year we held our ceremony at the flag poles at the front of the school. Now we have 803 children meeting in the Central Covered Games Area facing the beautiful Peace Garden built by Mark, our School's Officer, and paid for by Coolum RSL.

Sometimes we have a real life trumpeter and other times we rely on technology for the Last Post and the Reveille. This year we had drummers - fantastic! And these days, we are all excellent at the Minute's Silence! This year we added the New Zealand National Anthem. After all, ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps - it's not all about us!

Early ANZAC morning we meet at Seacove Court and proudly march with our school flag to the RSL for the Dawn Service. It's often cold and always dark. And we are always very quiet and respectful. We usually take one of the class' beautiful wreaths, and two Student Leaders line up and take it to the flag pole.

ANZAC Dawn Service on Lady Elliot Island

I was unable to attend this year. University holidays don't coincide with school holidays this year so I took a few extra days and went scuba diving with my daughter. On ANZAC morning, we stood in our wet suits on the beach facing a sunrise over the water watching the Australian flag flying on a yacht's mast and I was hoping that another tradition had been upheld back at Coolum RSL - and that is the supply of muffins for hungry little tummies. (I was so happy to see later on Facebook that in fact, Mr Foxover and Mrs Cathcart had remembered, and that the tradition has evolved to cupcakes!)

The importance of traditions

Schools that are many years old have often developed a number of traditions - things they do every year; at certain times of the year. These traditions are important to a school community as they foster stability, create a sense of belonging, and allow a school to move forward by creating memories to look back on.

Two of our Student Leaders at the Dawn Service

Our school is just four years old (actually, not even four yet!) and we have begun to create our own traditions. Some of these are Meet your Teacher Afternoon (just before school starts for a new year); weekly Assemblies with class performances; the Run Walk Challenge; our ANZAC Pre-service (including wreath making in the classroom) and attendance at the Dawn Service at the Coolum-Peregian RSL in April; the Mother's Day Stall; the Year 7 Theatre Excursion; the Talent Show; Under 8's Morning; the Book Week Assembly; the Book Fair; Year 7 Graduation, and even some of our camps and excursions.

These events are reminders that everything is 'as it should be'. Regardless of staff turn over and how big we grow, there is a sense of the familiar. There are things that stay the same.

Our developing traditions create a sense of belonging and connectedness within and to the group. New staff and students take on these traditions as their own and then look forward to them each year.

Traditions also mark the passing of time and become milestones, especially when the tradition belongs to a particular year level group - for example, the first camp in Year 4, and the Year 7 excursion to Brisbane to the theatre. These milestones give something to staff and students to look forward to and create feelings of continuity and stability.

Traditions are memory makers - already I hear staff say things like 'Remember our first Dawn Service in 2010 - what a small group we were'.

Traditions can have long lasting effects and survive all kinds of changes. We will continue to develop them for our school and add to them over the years as it is traditions that keep our school community strong.