Ethos

6 Blueprint I St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School

The end of any year brings with it mixed emotions. St Aidan’s has experienced a year for confirming the importance of our identity.

As the school has responded to the challenges of the year, we have done so from an understanding of our story and our past. This knowledge has enabled us to respond with confidence in the Ethos of the school as a living and thriving reality.

We have drawn strength from the values of the Society of the Sacred Advent: humility, compassion, courage, resilience, faithfulness and wholeheartedness. As we have wrestled with significant changes to teaching and learning, come to grips with a new senior assessment system and overlaid that all with our ongoing response to the pandemic, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed. Yet when we intentionally reflect on our responses, we can trace the values of the SSA underpinning our decisions, often quite subconsciously. This is a sign of integration of values, of walking the walk.

The ending of a year is not only a time for reflection on what has been, but an opportunity to look ahead and imagine what lies ahead. These days there is a tendency to be a little more apprehensive about looking too far forward. The Ethos of the SSA stands us in good stead going forward. Humility reminds us of the importance of simplicity in our planning and living, while compassion, especially for the most vulnerable in our midst, is at the heart of all decision-making. We have needed courage and resilience in spades, and the community has provided them at every turn.

Wholeheartedness, the valuing of all the aspects of our shared life from the most mundane to the most glorious, helps us to give our best to all that we do, while faithfulness to the good news of Jesus Christ is the gold thread that runs through every other aspect of life at school.

What could have been a year of struggle, then, turned out to be a year of wonders. Staff and students alike can look back on a year where we stepped out of our comfort zones and flew, just as we were ‘born’ to do. We were more creative, more independent, more adaptive and more flexible. We solved problems, built and nurtured relationships, and all the while we had fun.

Our faith reminds us that this is the pattern of resurrection which bursts forth at unexpected moments. When we expect to struggle, we thrive, and when we expect death we find life, not scraped together and barely breathing, but abundant, joyous, full and overflowing.

This is the image and promise we hold onto as we close out another remarkable year. Reverend Gillian Moses Chaplain

BA, LLB (Hons), BTh (Hons)

7