Dear Parents and Carers,

At the recent Catholic Education Leadership Day we listened to an address by Dr Neil McGoran, Director of Catholic Education South Australia on ‘Approaches to Catholic  Education’. During his talk he discussed how we often ask children and in particular teenagers the question ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’. Something I know I have often done myself. Dr McGoran believes we need to change the question in order to think about the skills and qualities they will need going into the future. We must look at the future demand skills as parents and educators. Dr McGoran suggested asking the following questions instead; ‘Who are you going to be?’ and ‘What impact are you going to have on life?’ Both questions challenge us to think deeper and with a more open mind.

Following on from the Leadership Day a colleague shared an article written by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister from America and a best-selling author and well-known international lecturer on topics of justice, peace, human rights, women's issues and contemporary spirituality in the church and in society. She presently serves as the co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, a partner organisation of the United Nations, facilitating a worldwide network of women peace builders, especially in the Middle East. The article challenges us to think about what our legacy is and what we leave behind. I have shared the article below.

What are we leaving behind?
In modern society, to leave a legacy ordinarily means to specify the distribution of property to heirs according to the terms described in a legal document. It’s a relatively rare event for most people to be mentioned in a will.

What we are inclined to forget is that each of us leaves a legacy, whether we mean to, whether we want to or not. Our legacies are the quality of the lives we leave behind.

What are we leaving behind? That is the question that marks the timbre of a lifetime.

We leave behind our attitude toward the world. We are remembered for whether or not we inspired in others a love for life and an openness to all of those who lived it with us. We will be remembered for our smiles and our frowns, for our laughter and for our complaints, for our kindness and for our selfishness.

We leave behind for all the world to see the value system that marks everything we do. People who never asked us directly what we valued in life never doubt for a moment what it was. They know if we cared for the Earth because they watched us as we seeded our flowerbeds – or left the debris from the garage spill over into what could have been a garden. They know what we thought of people of other colours or creeds by the language we used and the lives we connected with. They know the depth of our spiritual life by the way we treated those around us and what we thought of life and what we gave our lives to doing.

We leave behind the memory of the way we treated strangers, how we loved the individuals closest to us, how we cared for those who loved us, how we spoke to them in hard times, how we gave ourselves away to satisfy their needs.

We leave behind, in our very position on life and death, on purpose and meaning, a model of relationship with God. Our own spiritual life is both challenge and support to the spiritual struggles of those around us.

Our legacy is far more than our fiscal worth. Our legacy does not end the day we die. We have added to it every moment of our lives.

- from The Gifft of Years (BlueBridge), by Joan Chittister

Thank you for your ongoing care and partnership in your child’s learning.

God bless.

Rachel Smith
Principal