FROM THE HEADMASTER

Headmaster, Adam Heath, with Prep students from 2020.

Mr Adam Heath It was more than 25 years ago, but I still recall that the waves were enormous, bigger than any I had ever seen; a huge rolling swell that peaked and then crumbled around a rocky platform. Despite our fear, we goaded each other into action. To hesitate was to lose your nerve, so we plunged into the sea between sets of waves, hastily paddling beyond the break to the relative sanctuary of still water. Catching the first wave successfully only built a false confidence, a sense that these big crumbling beasts had a gentleness about them.

The second wave was different. It had broken before I even managed to get to my feet, providing an immediate trip to the ocean floor. Once released, I began scrambling for the surface, only to be caught and sent south by another wave. Being caught, whilst still underwater, by the third wave was when real panic struck. Finally freed, I began the interminable swim to the surface with lungs screaming for air. Almost unable to process the seemingly endless amount of time spent on the ocean floor, I sat on the beach, shaking, not from cold but the experience itself.

It feels, in some ways, that since the beginning of last year, we have been caught by a series of incredibly challenging waves.

The summer of 2019/20 presented catastrophic bushfires and gave Australians a worrying sense that our harsh climate may have placed us unenviably at the forefront of climate change. Just as we were digesting the damage wreaked, we were struck by a fully-fledged pandemic, with vaccine deployment the latest area of concern and contention.

Before developing any confidence in having emerged from the pandemic, have we discovered or are we actually just articulating for the first time in public discourse, with real anxiety and concern, that our underlying culture has and is causing tremendous harm to women in our country?

It is hard not to feel an enormous weight of responsibility. As parents, we are wondering ‘what is this future for which we are preparing our young? Have we inadvertently been contributing to a disastrous climatic future? Will we finally emerge from this pandemic to relative normality? What is the antidote to radically unhealthy ale stereotypes?’

Ours is not the first generation to encounter hardship, but it is the first in some time to experience it following a significant period of Australian prosperity. My mother speaks of her childhood in the Great Depression, followed by the war years and then the Polio epidemic.

Our first step may be to acknowledge our challenges as real. Secondly, to appreciate that each of these has no simple solution and requires enormous work, commitment and cooperation to tackle. But equally, we must realise that not one of these challenges is insurmountable.

I suspect, like all momentous change, it begins at the grassroots level of a community determining the positive future that they want for their children and making changes accordingly. As a School community, we seem already to have ascribed to this. As an example, with over 350kw of solar now installed on the rooves of our school buildings, we are moving quickly to model climate neutrality to our students and our community. With collective commitment, there is a very positive alternative future for our environment.

The strength of our community during the pandemic showed how resilient we can be, and will continue to be, in times of uncertainty.

Together, we will find our way through the immunisation phase of this pandemic, modelling and teaching resilience to our young, such that their confidence in the face of future adversity grows.

As we review everything up to and including the values of our School, our every interaction must model the respectful relationships we espouse; health, sex, sexuality and consent education are incredibly important but these must be underpinned by the values through which our young people intend to lead their lives. This is our constant work and it is never finished; we must do more, and better, to develop values-based respectful attitudes towards all other people. Beyond these immediate steps, there is enormous opportunity to build hope and positive change across our School community. At the beginning of 2020, we planned to launch our new Strategic Plan (available to view at bgs.vic.edu.au/about/ publications). On the eve of communicating this to families we moved to Learning at Home. Thus, we are now delighted to share this Strategic Plan 2021-2025, which has emerged as prescient for many of the events that have transpired over the last 18 months. It now serves as an ideal guide as we emerge from the restrictions of 2020 and describes our exciting aspirations.

Looking back, sitting shaking on the beach might just have been a relative luxury, having only faced three waves in the surf that day. We will inevitably face more societal challenges together as a School. But as a community we should feel tremendous reassurance that, daunting as they may seem, we have the capacity to tackle them, emerging with a determined focus on the positive future every one of our young people deserves.