Ngā mihi o te tau hou (greetings for the new year)!
Who are we? This was the question that sparked and drove our values review last term, which was an incredibly inspiring and galvanising activity for us to engage in as a community. As we welcome students back this week and launch our reset values, we begin the hard but essential work of embedding them. Reflecting on last term’s mahi, I go back to a comment by Brené Brown that we shared at the outset of the values review.
‘A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk or talk - we are clear about which we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts and behaviours align with those beliefs.’
Kā mihi nui, to everyone in our community for contributing to the values review and its outcomes, which I am privileged to share with you: Excellence, Respect, and Manaakitanga. Our core values.
We have not created new values. They were already there, and have been since our school was established in 1918. We just needed to interrogate what was there, and who we are and what this school means to us. This helped rearticulate and amplify our core values, which was a community effort, and gives us all ownership of the values.
Excellence, Respect, and Manaakitanga. These values will underpin everything we do going forward. They reflect who ‘we are at our natural best’ (Simon Sinek). As Brené Brown points out and challenges, we now need to live our values, authentically and every day.
In order to rediscover who we are, we also reframed the vision for our young people and rearticulated the mission. Together, the vision, mission, and values provide direction for everything that we do. They keep us focused on where we are going and what we’re working to achieve. They define our core values and how we are expected to behave at John McGlashan College. They guide decisions and behaviours, and apply to everyone in our community. Sitting atop, our motto grounds us and connects us to our origin story, our whakapapa. This is visualised below for you.
We launched the values with staff on Monday, and students, at the year’s first assembly on Wednesday. As I shared with staff and students, the values apply to everyone in our community. They are the non-negotiables by which we hold ourselves and each other accountable. The inclusion of verb statements alongside each noun value makes clear what the value-based behaviours looked like in practice, and in our particular setting.
These are values for life too, and we know that if the students live them authentically and intentionally during their journey at John McGlashan, they will be set for life beyond school. They will go out into the world to realise their potential, being the best version of themselves as people and men, and to think of others and uplift the community.
So what’s next? We began the work of embedding the values at the assembly on Wednesday, when a theme was set for the year - 100% Every Day. This was derived from discussions about Ivan Cleary’s (Penrith Panthers coach) comments that not everything you do might count, but in order to realise your potential, everything matters. Effort. Effort. Effort. The idea that working hard and bringing your best to everything you do gives you the optimum chance of personal success, whatever that looks like, and in whatever sphere.
As well as using the values and assorted values visuals, like the classroom posters, to point out when a student is not meeting the expectation of a particular value, we also recognise and celebrate positive behaviours that reflect the values in action. This is where we will make real progress in embedding and living them. The boys need to see the values modelled, and we need to explicitly teach them what the behaviours look like in practice.
It’s an exciting time. I’m so happy to have the students back. It has been a great week. There is a real energy around the campus. People have been asking me what the highlight of my summer was. The highlight was Wednesday morning when we welcomed new students and the school back at the mihi whakatau and assembly in the chapel, the heart of our school. I’m excited for the possibilities and potential of the year to come and working with parents, whānau, and the community, to support our students to realise their potential and thrive.
Open Event Registration - Interested in enrolling?
Employment opportunities - click if you're interested in working at McGlashan.