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.

Cardboard cut outs or creative units of learning

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

I read an interesting blog in the week by Seth Godin about why all Cadbury fruit and nut chocolate bars are identical - carbon cutouts of each other. Cadbury's employees follow a manual and a process which ensures they produce a perfect bar of chocolate every time - as a result, the Cadbury brand, the organisation and the chocolate they produce is known and trusted world-wide. This is good for the market (if you have shares in Cadbury), and it's good for the customer (as you are practically guaranteed a good bar of chocolate every time.)

This got me thinking about our classrooms. We are a big school now - we have many classes in each year level; for example, there are five Prep classes this year! There are many practices, procedures and routines that all our classes and teachers use and follow; this ensures our distinctive brand, our Peregian Spirit or the Peregian Way as we sometimes call it, is evident throughout our school. We are proud of our reputation for being a 'great school' and we know what we do is working for our children so we make sure we are doing it in every class and in each specialist area across the school.

There is a special blend of fruit and nuts (no pun intended) we expect to see in every room which guarantees a quality education. And in addition, every teacher and teacher aide sprinkles their own skills and knowledge and sense of creativity over the top that contributes to every child's experience of school - they all do it differently and it means that from year to year children experience something unique, all backed by our unique brand evident in every class, our Peregian Spirit.

Schools are a human endeavour, not a factory. Our classrooms will not all be the same; teachers are not all doing the same thing or doing things in the same way; we are not producing hundreds of little chocolate bars, all perfect and all the same. There will be similarities between rooms and parents will recognise these. And there will be differences to rejoice in.

(And in case you are interested, the chocolate in the picture is my favourite - a bar of Guittard - all individually crafted, ensuring a unique tasting experience, and one is rarely identical to another).

Whole School Assemblies - a precious part of our culture

I love our Assemblies!

Assembly occurs every Friday morning in the Central Covered Games Area and involves every student and every teacher (unless they are at swimming lessons!) It's the one time of the week when we all get together in one place and celebrate our learning journeys.

Our Assemblies are full of colour and fun. They are not the time of the week when we use the opportunity of everyone being together to have growl - although sometimes there are some messages that everyone needs to think about!

Our Assemblies are a time when students get to practice appropriate audience behaviour - we teach these skills explicitly and expect every child to demonstrate them. And they do this very well - although I long for the day when they can all stand QUIETLY for the Anthem!

The items from the classes are always wonderful - the Preps are usually colourful and very cute and command much attention. The Year 7s usually manage to make everyone laugh and then occasionally, we have a student steal the show (like last week) with her stage presence and skill in commanding a large audience of wrigglers! The items classes present are entertaining and also often focus on a point of interest about out school - for example, this year already we've seen skits on using the Take 5 and on our Code of Cooperation and getting along in the playground.

Assemblies are a time when we celebrate the successes of our students - in sport (both individually and in teams), in music and in any other area of endeavour. I love to see kids really appreciate the achievements of others - as we did last Friday with our record breaking swimming students from the 2012 Swimming Carnival.

I love that parents come along - and when they walk up the pathway afterwards everyone is smiling.

We also acknowledge Country - a very important tradition for all gatherings in Australia, and we proudly sing our Anthem - both verses! We learn a lot from all being together at least once a week - over the last few years as we have grown from 264 students in 2010 to 464 students in 2011 to 511 students in 2012 to a record breaking 712 students in 2013, I've watched all the space in our Central Covered Games Area gradually disappear under a sea of uniforms. But I'm determined we will continue to meet altogether once a week and somehow find a way to make all those bottoms fit!