Reflection

It was a privilege to attend camp with our Year 6 cohort last week. The students had multiple opportunities to exhibit our WEST values and many Spirit of Jesus moments were witnessed and shared while on camp. The High Ropes Course at Hollybank was an experience that put many of the students outside of their comfort zone. Some students were very reluctant to venture out onto the wires, but with a great deal of positive encouragement from the other students, every student in the class made it through at least one course. This encouragement was wonderful to witness and the sense of accomplishment and growth from the students who ‘had a go’ was evident on their faces long after we left Hollybank.

Often, the thing that holds us back from growth is the fear of making mistakes or the fear of the consequences that those mistakes will bring. We like to sit in our comfort zone. Feeling comfortable feels good, for a time. But, like with any other emotion, we don’t want to stay in this space forever, because meaningful growth does not live in the ‘comfortable’ space. As Emily McDowell, best known as @emilyonlife, states, “‘Personal growth’ is misleading, because it sounds like it is going to be fun. But if we called it ‘deliberately making yourself feel so uncomfortable it’ll feel like your dying’, nobody would do it…”. Hopefully our hesitant Year 6 students did not think they were really going to die on the High Ropes Course at Hollybank (think of the risk assessment), but they were obviously well and truly out of their comfort zone and this led to personal growth.

The best selling author, Alan Cohen has stated that “Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits”. These limits, or boundaries that we set for ourselves are like a mechanism that we install to prevent ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. We tell ourselves that we are unable to do a particular thing because of X, Y and Z. This may be learned or it may be something that we have been told by others. A classic example for some people is that they believe they are bad at something. Often this relates to maths, or english, or sport, or friendships. This leads to these people not trying anything in the area that they perceive themselves to be bad at. At St Patrick’s, we want to instil a mindset of growth in our students. We want them to push themselves out of their comfor zone and not restrict themselves based on ‘old limits’. As stated, these limits are often based on the idea that we are not allowed to make mistakes. Therefore, we want our students to see the value in being willing to making a mistake and then learn from that mistake. But, we also want them to value feedback and self reflection, both of which are required if we are to learn from our mistakes. At St Patrick’s we are striving to equip students with these tools throughout their schooling journey to improve their outcomes now and into the future.

Kurt Atkins 

Acting Principal