Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, these are your Captains speaking. Welcome to our final newsletter message from your fearless leaders.
Firstly, we would like to thank our student body for electing us to lead in our final year of schooling, it has been a privilege and an honour for us to serve the school in this way. We would also like to thank the school community for their continuing support of us in these leadership roles. This leadership team started out quite differently, with Ethan Peters as School Captain. Earlier in the year, Ethan was enlisted into the Australian Defence Force, and Isaac, as the elected Vice Captain, stepped up to fulfil the role.
We have both been here since Kindergarten and have seen the school more than double in size both in students and in buildings. We’ve seen three people in the Principal role: firstly Mrs Judy Huda, followed by Mr Graham Hope, and now Mr Glen Westcott. It has been great being a part of this community during these thirteen years of growth. Over the years we have had many teachers that have helped shape and influence our character for the better including Mrs Andrea Lovell, Mrs Annette Moss, Mrs Donna Pepper, Miss Hollie Oates and Mr Greg Ballantyne among others. Without these role models influencing ours lives through education and the Christian faith we would not be the leaders and people we are today. PCS has a great community of people who are willing to put in the time and effort to make us great human beings.
We would also like to show our appreciation for our parents, who encouraged us to pursue a leadership role in the school and have supported us not only this year but throughout our schooling. When our parents made the decision to enrol us at PCS thirteen years ago we are sure that they had plans for our lives. We hope we have made them proud.
In our leadership of the Student Representative Council, we have seen the recent installation of a schoolwide PA system. As the newly elected captains and SRC, we went on our first team building trip to a Student Leadership Conference in Wollongong. While we were there, we experienced being in a school that had music playing over a PA system, and we found that student and staff mental health can be positively impacted by creating this type of environment, and the students at our school were keen to have this sort of technology. We thought this was a really important initiative to bring to our school, and in the planning stages, we expected to raise funds knowing that we Year 12 students may not experience the benefits ourselves. However, through the support of our school community, we were able to see our ideas come to fruition in time for the Spring Fair this year and students have already been dancing their way through lunchtime and off to classes.
For those thinking about becoming school leaders, there are enormous benefits in pushing yourself into this role. We both began this as Primary Captains in Year 6 and have continued to develop the confidence to talk to various groups of people and lead a team of people towards achieving a goal. It is also a great stepping stone to university as most applications ask for extra-curricular activities and leadership. We have been able to use our experiences as School Captains to enhance our applications.
It has been a great joy to lead this school and we look forward to seeing what happens here in the next thirteen years and beyond. We will both head off to separate cities to study our separate courses and find our careers, but with younger siblings still here we’ll stay updated on PCS and it will always hold an important place in our hearts.
Your 2018 School Captains – Emma Greenland and Isaac Westcott