Headmaster

GREG WAIN

Headmaster

HEADMASTER’S SPEECH DAY ADDRESS 2015 Distinguished guests, members of the School Council, parents, staff and boys of The Southport School, it is my great pleasure to address you this Speech Day, the final academic day of the 115th year of The Southport School.

INTRODUCTION – THE MOVIE In the July holidays I watched the film American Sniper, the true story of Chris Kyle during the Iraq War. He was the most prolific sniper in United States military history. American Sniper had plenty of ‘blokesy’ shooting and fighting and dark humour, but in the end I found it more depressing than uplifting. It is definitely an anti-war movie when you see the effects of the war on Chris Kyle and his family, and the SEAL colleagues he fought alongside. American Sniper was nominated for six Oscars and has become the highest-grossing war movie ever, overtaking Saving Private Ryan.

After watching the movie and later reading the book Chris Kyle co-wrote, I thought the story contained a number of good Speech Day themes such as leadership as influence, hope, understanding others, and proactively improving mental health. All those themes are interrelated, but I think ‘hope’ is the main one we need to emphasise to our boys, and to each other, given the global events of 2015.

Actually, I was reminded why all those themes are important recently when Fr Jonathan asked me to talk to the weekly Chapels about how I was called to this vocation. (The boys in Chapel got momentarily excited when they thought I was going to talk about a vacation…) My vocation, teaching, and later being a leader in a school, has much to do with a goodhearted but somewhat misfortunate fellow, Les, with whom I worked when I was a jackeroo. When I met Les he was recently out of gaol, for the second time, and I gave him a hand writing his regular letter back to his probation officer in Sydney. As I gained his trust and he told me his story I started to wonder how he had ended up that way, and then I started thinking about what experiences he could have had that might have sent him on a more productive and happier path, and how could society be changed and schools be changed to help children and young adults develop to be the best they could be. I am still engaged in that problem-solving exercise, reflecting on the ups and downs of the lives of TSS boys, researching adolescent development, and pondering the lives of people outside TSS like Chris Kyle.

Our aim is to prepare our boys for their greatest frontier – their journey in life – by kitting them out with a backpack containing the skills, habits, experiences and capabilities to help them succeed on that journey.

CHRIS KYLE – SEAL Chris Kyle was a Navy SEAL, a commando trained in special operations. SEAL stands for Sea, Air and Land warfare. It is the equivalent of our SAS (Special Air Services). Not many

servicemen make it into the three-year SEAL training course, and only 20% graduate. It is designed to develop extreme physical capabilities and psychological resilience. It culminates in a final test of conditioning where the prospective SEALs engage in military-style team exercises over five days straight, with only three to four hours sleep the whole time, involving over 300km of running, swimming and paddling boats.

Kyle graduated into the SEALs and went on to train as a sniper. He proved to be an outstanding commando and an exceptional sniper. Kyle’s longest successful shot in Iraq was over a distance of 1920 metres; nearly two kilometres.

In his four tours of duty in Iraq, Kyle earnt two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valour. He survived six Improvised Explosive Devices attacks, three gunshot wounds, two helicopter crashes, and more surgeries than he could remember.

As a sniper, he was supposed to take position high up in a building, at a safe distance, where he could watch over the Marines on the ground who were clearing buildings of insurgents. Often he realised he had more training and experience than the Marines so he could protect them better if he was on the street, going house to house with the troops, making sure they didn’t make any mistakes. Several times when his team was ambushed he ran through a hail of bullets to pull wounded Marines to safety. Combat evaluations towards the end of his tours had recommended Chris Kyle for SEAL Team Six, the elite SEAL Team that later captured Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Kyle grew up on a cattle ranch in Texas and at school was a member of the equivalent of our Cattle Club. Kyle wasn’t a natural student at school, but he had a remarkable ability to retain information like a mission briefing, and while using his sniper rifle he had the capability to do complicated math, accounting for wind speed, the spin of a bullet and the curvature and rotation of the Earth, all of which he had to calculate mentally under intense pressure. He was an amazing soldier.

KYLE’S DEPRESSION Eventually what Chris Kyle did and what he witnessed caught up with him. Friends missing in action, friends injured and friends killed all led to early signs of depression. Then, some months later two friends are shot, hours apart, one fatally. He wrote … “Nothing I’d experienced in Iraq had ever affected me like this … I got back to base and tears started flowing from my eyes… I was in a dark hole.”

I have no doubt we all have our limit on how much tragedy and stress we can experience, and we probably won’t know that limit until we get there, so we need to monitor ourselves, and we need other people watching out for us.

At that point Kyle found comfort in his Christian faith. He started reading the Bible again and he wrote … “With all hell breaking loose around me it felt better to know I was part of something bigger.” Then his daughter became ill and his health got worse. His blood pressure shot up and he couldn’t sleep properly. His wife described him as… “numb to everything, it was hard for him to pinpoint how he felt about anything, he was just wiped out and overwhelmed”.

Chris Kyle, a man much tougher than most of us, had gone over his limits. He returned home and started self-medicating on alcohol, which, like drugs, numbs the pain, but does not fix the problem. He ended up rolling his pickup truck after drinking and at that stage he realised he needed to do something.

Our new Health and Wellbeing Counsellor, Dr Angela Zagoren, talks about how it is … “really hard to look after your mental health, it’s easier to do nothing, it’s easier to use alcohol or drugs to put off dealing with your problems, it actually takes humility and courage to do something, to come forward and ask for help… and we need to remember that no matter how tough or resilient we are, we can all do better if we have support”.

OUT OF DEPRESSION Chris Kyle had the courage to seek help. On advice from his psychologist, to help himself heal, Kyle started looking after other injured vets from Iraq.

As we say at TSS, using your strengths in the service of others builds your wellbeing by giving you a sense of purpose and meaning. Kyle noticed people healed faster if they got outside into nature, so he got ranch owners to donate their places for a few days to let him take small groups of disabled servicemen hunting and shooting or just spending time and talking to others who had been through the same experiences.

By asking for help and taking action, Chris Kyle worked his way into a better state of mind.

HOPE FOR A BETTER SCHOOL, A BETTER SOCIETY Within Kyle’s story I see five beacons that give us hope for protecting our boys, hope for them reaching their full potential, and hope for a better school and a better society. The TSS Habits of Heart, developed by Fr Jonathan, encourage us all to ‘inspire hope’ to help people see a positive future.

HOPE – POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY The first beacon of hope: Positive Psychology. He probably didn’t know it, but Chris Kyle was using Positive Psychology principles to help cure his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and his depression. When his job started to produce more negative emotions than positive emotions he made a change, he got out of the SEALs. When he started helping other war veterans he experienced more positive emotions, a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose.

You can do your own mental-health ‘thriving’ check by considering the five Positive Psychology elements in your life

using the mnemonic REMAP – Relationships, Engagement, Meaning, Achievement and Positive emotions.

You can be your own life coach or counsellor by attending to those five elements of your life.

We can’t have positive emotions all the time, but we need a preponderance of them to grow to our potential, and to build our resilience for when bad things happen.

This ‘broaden and build theory’ of Positive Psychology says that if we are under stress all the time and experience too many negative emotions, our possible range of responses to situations narrows to more flight or fight responses. We are less tolerant, less able to see possible solutions and less inclined to help others. Positive emotions broaden our cognitive abilities. Positive emotions increase our ability to acquire knowledge, increase our tolerance, and we can create many more solutions to problems. Positive emotions broaden our ability to see the good in circumstances and other people, and increases our propensity to help others. So our Positive Psychology program gives me hope.

HOPE – INTEROCEPTIVE AWARENESS The second beacon of hope: The new science of interoceptive awareness, your awareness of your body and emotions. As a sniper, Chris Kyle trained with controlledbreathing techniques. Again, he didn’t know it, but that body awareness probably mitigated against worse post-traumatic stress and depression. The optimum time to shoot at a target is at the bottom of your breath, when you have just breathed out, and between heartbeats, because that is when your body has the least amount of movement.

At the International Conference on Thinking in the middle of the year we heard from Guy Claxton, who is sort of the UK ‘thinking guru equivalent’ of American Art Costa of Habits of Mind fame.

Claxton’s presentation was, for me, a source of hope as he described how research is showing clearer links between the body and the mind, and how we can use our body intelligence to control our mind and improve our mental health. Claxton moves us from the old paradigm of intelligence residing in the brain, the ‘command centre’, and the body being simply a vehicle to be controlled and piloted by the brain, to the new paradigm of the mind as less like the ‘command centre’ and more like a ‘chat room’, where the body’s systems share information and debate the best actions. Our brain is actually distributed through the whole body, and cannot be separated from it. For example, deep, steady breathing increases your spatial intelligence, and how well you can listen to your heartbeat predicts the success of your decision-making.

Claxton says this growing understanding of the disbursal of the brain throughout the body means a good education needs to include less screen time and more physical movement and making things. Claxton enthuses about the growing ‘maker movement’, which combines cerebral and physical accomplishments. Several of our classes have been involved in International Boys Schools Coalition research in the ‘maker movement’ area.

Interoceptive awareness looks like allowing us to access emotions and physical sensations unfiltered by a stressed, depressed or anger-affected pre-frontal cortex. We get a hint of what might be possible with the expression ‘take a deep breath’ in a moment of anger or fear. Slow and steady breathing calms us and reduces stressful beta rhythms in our brain.

By learning to engage with troublesome emotions and memories through interoceptive awareness brain pathways, we may experience the first signs of healing. Here is a very basic interoceptive awareness exercise for you to try at home. It is an effective way to consciously bridge the mind-body connection and is effective in slowing down the pace of life, reinstating physiological and psychological balance, and helping us deal with anger, depression or fear: Breathe in through your nose for a slow count from 1 to 4. Notice your belly expanding. Hold the breath for a four count. Slowly exhale through pursed lips for a four count. Hold the empty lungs for a four count.

Cycle through that pattern three or four times. Take a longer five count if it works better.

HOPE – LOOKING AFTER EACH OTHER The third beacon of hope: Looking after each other.

This is something we constantly remind the boys about. It is an effective way of building positive emotions and spirit, and a great way of ensuring people get help before things go too far. Chris Kyle was in many ways a superman, but like all of us, he had his vulnerabilities. We need to have our boys grow up in an environment where it is OK to talk about your vulnerabilities. The boys need to understand none of us are superman. We all need help at some stage.

As mentioned before, on the advice of his psychologist Kyle began organising outings where men with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could spend time together involved in hunting or target shooting – tapping their ‘warrior spirit’ as Kyle put it, a bit like group therapy In one ranch visit, a marine named Brady excused himself and went outside. Something had triggered Brady’s PTSD. Kyle noticed and went out to ask if Brady was OK. That’s often all it takes to help; keep an eye on people, and if you notice a change, ask if they are OK. It was inspiring to hear of several instances this year of TSS boys watching out for a mate and getting him help when he needed it and telling us about their concerns.

HOPE – EMPATHY The fourth beacon of hope: Empathy. One of our Habits of Mind of highly effective people is to work at understanding others. At the higher end of ‘understanding’ there is ‘empathy’, one of the most difficult psychological tasks. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s situation from their perspective, to place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. If a person feels empathy, they are more likely to help others. The development of empathy in our boys is a key goal of our programs in Habits of Mind, Habits of Heart, Myers-Briggs and Positive Psychology. I believe it is the key to a peaceful and bullying-free school, and the key to a peaceful world. So our increasing ability to develop empathy gives me great hope. Chris Kyle did not develop empathy towards the local people during his four tours, but one of his best mates did. SEAL Marc Lee, in his last letter home before he was killed in front of Kyle, wrote that the horrors he had witnessed and getting to know the Iraqi people had caused him to think about their plight. He realised that as an American he automatically felt superior to the locals, as if he was from a superior race, but as he got to know the locals he worked out there was no rational reason for him to feel superior.

Marc Lee started to see the American presence from the point of view of the locals and the insurgents. He then started to empathise with people of different race, economic status and religion in his own country, the US. As a budding philosopher with immerging empathy, Marc Lee wrote to his family to be more kind and generous towards others different to them, to treat all human life as precious. He felt more compassion and random acts of kindness by Americans towards each other would improve America, and America’s reputation in the world. Marc Lee felt this sort of behaviour was the best way to ensure America’s freedom.

I love the quote of a Year 8 boy when interviewed about what the Positive Psychology program in his English class did for him … “I understand myself better, and I understand others in the class better.”

What a brilliant outcome!

There are lots of innovative learning and teaching using Myers-Briggs going on at TSS at the moment. One example is Mr Sam Lobascher’s use of the boys’ Myers-Briggs profiles to build empathy and understanding in a topic on ‘Australia’s treatment of refugees’ by exploring the T/F, Thinking/ Feeling preference on Myers-Briggs. The T/F pair describes how you prefer to make decisions. If you are a ‘T’, Thinker, you put more weight on objective principles and impersonal facts, analyse pros and cons, use technical methods and are more task oriented.

If you are an ‘F’, Feeler, you put more weight on what people care about, you prefer to establish or maintain harmony, and you prefer tact over the cold truth, but are sometimes seen as a bit idealistic or indirect. We all use both styles, but we generally have a preference for one.

Mr Lobascher first had the boys write about their views on refugees using their preferred style and talked about how that style, T or F, would influence their views. Then, his big ‘empathy innovation’ – he had the boys write a second persuasive piece using the other perspective. T’s became F’s and F’s became T’s.

To quote the erudite Mr Lobascher… “This forced the boys to articulate the strengths of arguments that contradicted their own, thus encouraging them to empathise with differing perspectives… this not only developed empathy, but made them better thinkers and communicators.”

HOPE – GOOD LEADERSHIP The fifth beacon of hope: Good leadership. Christian leadership researcher John Maxwell has a really simple definition of leadership – ‘leadership is influence’.

Maxwell points out that even the most introverted individual, with no structured plan, will influence over 10,000 people during his or her lifetime! Just imagine if our boys, after they leave school, actually made an effort to influence people for the betterment of the groups they belong to.

Maxwell says the Apostle Paul’s second letter in the New Testament to his apprentice Timothy is very much a leadership training manual. Paul writes to Timothy … “ignite your leadership gifts … don’t be timid … step up and take the Church beyond where I have taken it …lead boldly regardless of the moral failings in the world”.

That message is encapsulated in 2 Timothy 1:7 where Paul writes … “for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline”.

This spirit and power within our boys gives me hope.

EACH BOY’S PATH – THE GREATEST FRONTIER In conclusion, despite the current moral failings in the world, which sometimes make us feel despondent, we have much cause for hope. If we can continue to create TSS as a place where each boy can develop to be the best he can be, and if we can guide them morally, develop their leadership abilities and provide the boys through our unique programs and teaching with a ‘backpack’ of skills, habits, dispositions and abilities to help them become young men ready for their greatest adventure – life – then we will be producing the best possible leaders to deal with the problems of the world and work towards the betterment of their families, workplaces and communities.

Your ‘path’, boys, the ‘greatest frontier’.

To finish off, and to practise another TSS Habit of Heart – Be Grateful – I have expressions of gratitude to staff and the School Council.

THANK YOU ALAN PARSONS, STAFF, COUNCIL This is Mr Parsons’ final Speech Day with us after 15 years of loyal and dedicated service to The Southport School. Mr Parsons has been fittingly farewelled at our final assembly and at the graduation ceremony, but I did want to give parents today an opportunity to thank Alan for all he has done. Alan is rated by the boys as one of our ‘Ideal Teachers’ and he has served the boys, staff and parents of TSS with great merit, conscientiousness and dignity. Alan has been, for me and the staff, a source of exceptional wisdom, steadiness, counsel and considered decision-making; he is a compassionate man deeply committed to social justice, and a true ‘gentleman’.

Mr Parsons’ Myers-Briggs profile is INFP. Often called ‘Healers’, INFPs frequently hear a call to go forth into the world and help others, a call they seem ready to answer. Mr Parsons has certainly answered the ‘call to help others’ at TSS … teaching and counselling hundreds of TSS boys, and many colleagues, and we thank him for 15 years’ dedication and service to The Southport School.

Thank you to our dedicated, talented and passionate staff. It has been another busy year with many demands and expectations placed on staff. TSS continues to travel well through the ‘new normal’ of the post-GFC economy on the Coast. I evidence the ‘travelling well’ by an incredible 18% increase in enrolments since the GFC. Now, all this good news is in no small way the result of staff continuing to provide outstanding service, coaching, pastoral care and teaching to the boys, and willingly undertaking regular professional learning to improve and align themselves with our Vision and boys’ education programs.

My thanks also to the members of the School Council; the committed group of volunteers who willingly give many hours of community service work as stewards of this great school to ensure good governance, financial management and strategic development. Thank you to the Chairman of Council, Mr Fraser Perrin, who, as I say each year, gets to advise on the most interesting and challenging incidents that inevitable occur in such a large school. After many years, Fraser and Catherine finished their time as TSS parents last week with the graduation of Tasman, but the School Council and the Diocese are delighted Fraser will stay on Council for some time yet.

I thank our parents for the trust you have placed in us, we are honoured to be a partner with you in the nurturing of your sons into fine young men.

Thank you to the boys for your energy, humour, inspiration and many contributions as part of the living history of The Southport School.

Thank you all for your support of The Southport School during the past year, the 115th year of this great School. … I wish you all a happy, peaceful and holy Christmas.

SCHOOL COUNCIL

SEATED ROW: PROF K.L. DUNSTAN, DR C.A. MIRAKIAN, MR F.D. PERRIN (CHAIRMAN), RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP A. TAYLOR, MR G.R. WAIN (HEADMASTER,) MS L.M. MCCOLL, MRS J.A. REDLER (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT) SECOND ROW: MR R.W. CARDIFF (CFO), FR H.L. REUSS, MR N.I. QUARTERMAINE, DR A.E. PAXTON-HALL, MR N.C. SHARPE, MR A.K. TWEMLOW, MR G.C. RIX, PROF M. BLUMENSTEIN