Courageous / Courage Overflows

Courage Overflows

Our Grade 12 students show immense courage each year

The challenge to walk 80 km in 24 hours in the annual Walkathon is an incredibly demanding experience for any human – even the fittest of them. It takes emotional and physical courage to complete the Walkathon and each year I witness our students displaying that courage. I am also witness to the incredible effort the student body, and in particular Grade 12, put into the entire Walkathon experience. A Grade 12 student this year coordinated an acoustic night fundraiser. She put an enormous amount of effort into planning and putting together the line-up and was one of the key performers. This took an enormous amount of courage to say, ‘Hey I’m going to organise this fundraising event and I’m going to put my neck on the line and perform at it and hope that people will turn up’. It was a huge success, raised a lot of money and engendered community spirit for this year's Walkathon early on in Term 1 – inspiring!

An area where I would like to see students show more courage is in speaking truth to power. As a society we have an ingrained set of challenges we need to collectively solve: inequality, climate change, loss of biodiversity. These challenges will be the cornerstone problems for the next generation. For our students it is vital that they step up with courage to solve them by approaching people in positions of power who are not addressing them adequately and challenge them on it. This will take courage and I believe our students have that courage based on what I have seen of them this year.

John McLaine, Coordinator Grade 11 and 12 and Walkathon Coordinator

Grade 12 students organised an ice bucket challenge as part of this year's Walkathon fundraising.