More impressive than you realised

Impressive students were everywhere I looked this week, and there were a lot of places to look.

• Basketball fixtures

• Showcase performances and presentations

• Tournament of Minds preparations for the final this Saturday 7 September

• ICAS tests in the Primary School

• Year 9 students collecting for Legacy

• Building Bridges training for leaders

• The vocal group performing at the City of Clarence Eisteddfod

• German students competing in the Goethe poetry competition.

These were just some of the major activities this week.

“In these situations, and so many more, students are seeing personal improvement and teamwork as the status quo”

These folk were impressive in a host of different ways. Some displayed great virtuosity, like Daniella Knibbe, Imogen Brouwer and Zac Vonk who astounded us with their solo music performances.

Others, like the Year 9 students collecting for Legacy and the Year 10—11 leaders training for Building Bridges stepped into relative degrees of the unknown for the benefit of others. There was even a lovely friendly rivalry between the boys and girls collecting for Legacy to see who collected the most.

The vocal ensemble stepped out to perform in a new competition and acquitted themselves exceptionally well in the judge’s commentary.

In the basketball our Division One team defeated Friends’ School, our Year 10 girls team defeated St Mary’s College, and our Year 8 girls were defeated by Sacred Heart College. These players have embraced the improvement required to perform in a more competitive and skilled competition.

In these situations, and so many more, students are seeing personal improvement and teamwork as the status quo, and the raison d’être of what we do.

We continue to define ‘impressive’ and ‘having a go’ as giving something your best shot and participating. We continue to encourage students to believe that they are better for trying, reaching and, yes, even failing. We have vanquished the defeatist spirit of ‘at least we were not last’ that once existed at Calvin. There was no evidence of that spirit this week. We continue to endorse the vital outlook of stepping out of your comfort zone.

“Impressive was everywhere!”

A mentor once explained the role of the Holy Spirit through the metaphor of a young boxer’s fight coach. The coach of a young boxer needs to select opponents for bouts that will be neither too hard nor too easy. The fight coach knows that matching a novice against a world champion is pointless for learning and dangerous for welfare. An opponent that is too easy produces overconfidence and complacency. The fight coach knows that the right opponent exposes weakness and recruits improvements in skill and attitude.

The fight coach is an appropriate metaphor for the work of the Holy Spirit. It is this same approach that frames how our staff work with students and how our co-curricular and academic programs position students for growth.

You could physically see this at work this week. Impressive was everywhere!

Iain Belôt – Principal

Calvin’s Got Talent

Our school program is designed to foster a heart of service to others, especially those we do not know. We desire to build an empathy mindset through programmed events and enterprise opportunities.

Identifying compassion as a core value anchors service to others as a priority in our culture. Compassion is an expression of empathy for those we do not know. Friendship is caring for those with whom we are already in relationship.

Jesus called us to live to serve the most vulnerable in our community and around the world.

The evidence of a heart for service is a willingness to bear personal sacrifice and inconvenience for the benefit of others.

“The evidence of a heart for service is a willingness to bear personal sacrifice and inconvenience for the benefit of others.”

For this reason free dress days are not considered a legitimate service event. Purchasing the opportunity to avoid wearing school uniform is a win/win transaction infused with an element of bribery. Money is desired to assist a charity and many students would prefer not to wear the uniform. Free dress days are a fundraising event, not a service event. Donating money and having to wear uniform would have a greater measure of charity expressing a heart for service. The school stopped free dress days for fundraising to emphasise that service and fundraising are different.

Fundraising transactions for charity are widespread in our society. Purchasing raffle tickets is effective fundraising. So is selling cakes at recess and lunchtime. In the coming weeks, our students will assist Legacy to support families of service personnel by selling badges at shopping centres. These are perfectly legitimate activities in support of valuable causes.

Running fundraising activities is not a pathway to fostering a heart of service. People with a service heart probably donate.

In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25: 15-30) and the Parable of the Minas (Luke 19: 11-27) Jesus tells stories of profitable investments that can be used for kingdom purposes. An essence of these parables is that faith requires and produces increase.

“The school stopped free dress days for fundraising to emphasise that service and fundraising are different.”

‘Calvin’s Got Talents’ is a service learning project with a fundraising focus that recruits initiative and enterprise in the service of helping others. This program sits within the ‘Faith and Life’ curriculum. Students are given $10 by the school as a starter amount to engage in some enterprise that will create a greater return that they will donate to a charity of their choice.

There are numerous benefits to the program, including fostering a personal connection to a charity, promoting enterprise, encouraging teamwork, and helping students to focus on people less fortunate than themselves.

Most importantly, especially for people of faith, is the opportunity to invite God to bless the project and bring greater increase. Many of these initiatives become a testament to God moving in partnership. The investment of students’ time, energy and emotion moves the program to more than a transactional event than just simply fundraising. While we hope for a financial return to bless others, our goal is the deposit into the hearts of our student’s that will be made through the program.

Iain Belôt – Principal

Imagination and Reason in Book Week

Book Week was embraced this week at Calvin as we celebrated the most powerful gifts in our culture—the written word and the ability to read.

Our celebration contributes to assisting those who are without the privilege of the literacy that you as a reader and myself as a writer are engaged in. Some of our initiatives contribute to increasing indigenous literacy beyond the 3 in 10 ratio of students who meet national minimum standards in literacy in the Northern Territory.

Reading empowers us to command critical moments in our life.

“Reading empowers us to command critical moments in our life.”

The Primary School was bathed in colour and creativity for their Book Week Assembly.  Impressively, many students and staff donned costumes for the occasion. I was delighted to present a number of medals to students for achievement in the Premier’s Reading Challenge.

We must nurture creativity, imagination and reason as vibrant intellectual abilities that complement each other. To that end, the works of C. S. Lewis were featured this week. To many, myself included, his works reveal his distinction in the fusion of the imagination and reason.

‘Lewis’ books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies.  The seven books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia, first published more than 60 years ago, have sold the most – estimated at 150 million copies – and have been popularised on stage, TV, radio and the movies. Since 2001, Mere Christianity (1952) has sold 3 million copies and The Screwtape Letters (1942) 2 million copies.  It is estimated that annual sales of Lewis’ books range as high as 6 million copies. In all there are 110 authored or edited books by Lewis and about 300 books that discuss him and his work, with additional new ones published every year, many as bestsellers. The combined box office sales for the three Narnia films so far total $1.5 billion, and the film series is the 24th highest grossing of all time’.

“A Christian School community must equally value reason and revelation. ”

‘Until the Harry Potter series, the seven novels of Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia book series were the most influential children’s books in the world, voted so by successive polls of parents, librarians and teachers, and by their sales. And the Potter books haven’t cut into Narnia’s market. Indeed, they’ve greatly expanded it as sales of Narnia have increased by 20% during this time’. (Independent Institute website)

There are four great contributions C. S. Lewis has made to literature and culture.

1. Lewis showed that reason is the anchor of faith. By presenting a defence of the Christian faith that appealed to reason, Lewis removed obstacles to faith that most people in our world face today.  By restoring reason to its rightful place, Lewis showed how Christianity could appeal to those earnestly seeking answers to the great questions of life.

2. Lewis punctured the pretension of modern elite intellectuals. Lewis revealed that one’s own reason cannot be trusted if humanity is solely the product of random-chance evolution. Lewis tied faith and reason together, where Christianity is both faithful and rational.

3. Lewis noted that ‘Reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.’ (1939) The concept of story or narrative was crucial for Lewis. He showed that Christian imagination could expand our sense of what is possible. Christian imagination could re-enchant a world that has been disenchanted by the limited possibilities of modernism and scientism. He showed that speaking about God in non-religious terms is vital, making the truths of Christianity fresh and novel.

4.  Lewis restored a Christian vision of humanity—the eternal destiny of every human being. As a result, he fought against the dehumanising aspects of modern culture.

As a Christian school, we should champion the legacy of C. S. Lewis that reconnects reason and faith, and that allows a triumph of Christian inspiration and imagination in our students.

Iain Belôt – Principal