Our School ValuesOver the last few months, our staff have been exploring Christian Schools Tasmania’s new Vision, Mission and Values Statements. We have discussed and unpacked these new statements by asking some important questions: What does it mean to be transformational? What does (or should) highest quality Christ-centred education look like? How will our values impact the daily lives of our students, staff, families and the broader communities in which Northern Christian School operates?
More recently, we have gone through an encouraging and exciting journey where we have looked at what school values are and what we would like them to be at Northern. More specifically, the staff asked themselves these questions: We want to have values that are unique to Northern Christian School, and that underpin our new collective Vision, Mission and Values. Our previous Values of Enriching, Encouraging and Equipping. have been very difficult at times for some of our students to articulate, understand and promote. Together, we explored how Values frame the culture of a school; they serve as a behavioural compass guiding how we act, what we say, the choices we make etc. Therefore, we want all of our students, parents, families, staff and the wider community to understand and be able to reflect our Values in their interactions with each other. In the process of choosing Values to represent Northern, staff were given a list of 400 values and asked to select only three by taking into account what they were are saying to students, staff and parents daily at Northern: We shared and reviewed each of the chosen values, and it was evident that there were many similarities and duplicates. From the responses, it was easy to agree on three Values: Respect — We expect and model respect. Kindness — We encourage and celebrate kindness. Resilience — We promote and nurture resilience.
Our new Values capture and underpins our Christian School Tasmania Vision, Mission and Values very well and define our expected culture at Northern. I believe our Northern community, even our Little Learners, will be able to article, understand, promote and celebrate values that will guide how they act, what they say and the choices they make. It is my hope and prayer that our new Values won’t simply be statements that live on a webpage, on school signage or a document, but rather that these statements will be lived out in our everyday life at Northern and have a deep and significant impact on our culture and the way we deliver our teaching and learning programs to our students. Most importantly, it is my sincere prayer that we will allow God to continue the transformational work He is doing in each of our lives so that we might have the mind, heart and life of Christ and be used by Him, according to our skills, giftings and abilities, for the benefit of others. Bethany Armstrong - Principal
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