From the Principal
Hello from all of us here at Pymble. To families with school-aged children, we hope you have enjoyed a lovely mid-year break from routine and are excited for what the second half of the year holds in store for you. Certainly, there was much excitement among our Pymble family when we received the news that one of our students who attended the Oxford Royale Summer School program at Oxford University during the break also won the Great Debate. This is the second consecutive year Pymble has won the international competition and are so proud of all our Oxford Summer School stars.
It’s been wonderful to see our girls embrace the opportunity to undertake international experiences again to enhance their learning, grow in independence, and further develop their understanding of the world and their responsibility as global citizens. Our language tours and cultural exchange programs are also back in action, as is our service trip to Tanzania later this year, and we are currently looking to introduce new international cultural exchanges and service tours to Greece (to work with a charity supporting refugees) and Poland/Israel (to learn about Jewish culture and the Holocaust). We look forward to sharing more details about these opportunities as they are confirmed.
Growing a culture of kindness
Social Intelligence is one of our four focus areas of our Strategic Plan for development in students, equal to and alongside building Academic, Digital and Emotional Intelligence. As communities continue to evolve and diversify, our aim is for our young people to learn about, respect and be inclusive of people from all cultures, all faiths and beliefs, and all walks of life.
All four of our strategic pillars are conducted through the lens of being kind – to yourself, to others and to the environment. This year we have been proud to see our entire community of students, staff and parents from across the College embrace our Pymble Gives Back initiative to spread kindness and care by being of service to others.
In Term 2, we were delighted to host our annual Kindness Convention, which you can read more about here. Our Junior School also held a Kindness Day of service and activities to bring joy to the lives of the elderly and those in hospital, and to support local and global charities and projects helping people in need. In total, our students from Kindergarten to Year 6 clocked up 3,800 acts of service in their own homes and in local and global communities in Term 2, which is an incredible outcome for our young changemakers.
Our Secondary School students also focused on the joy of giving and being of service to others in a range of activities supporting women’s health, the environment, international refugee communities and First Nations peoples. The girls harnessed their creativity and collaboration to organise events supporting charities including Wayside Chapel, Costumes for Cancer, Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal, Days for Girls, and the Turkey-Syria earthquake recovery.
Closer to home, our older students took our younger students under their wings in a range of Big Sister/Little Sister programs to deepen connections and community amongst the different year groups. This included Year 12 and Year 11 ‘speed meeting’ sessions, Year 11 working with Year 5 students, and Year 9 visiting Kindergarten girls at lunchtime to organise games and play with them in the sandpit and mud kitchens.
In Term 3, all students across all year groups will continue to focus on being learners who seek ‘to give rather than ‘to get’, to include rather than expect others to fit in, and to do their bit – small, medium or large – to make our school, our community and our world the kind of place where we all belong.
From our family to yours, wishing you all the best until we meet again.
Mrs Clair Stock
