Grammar Gazette- Issue 2, 2006

FROM THE PR INC I PAL

IN FOCUS

Links for Life Imagine over one hundred and sixty education leaders and experts from Australasia gathered in the School’s Library and you’ll have a sense of how the tenth annual Alliance of Girls’ Schools Conference began. Girls to Women:

interview stage then enhances their overall experience of the application process and can hopefully strengthen their resolve to apply for more demanding roles in the future. Brisbane Girls Grammar aspires to ensure our young women have the very best preparation to succeed in the future as good citizens, professionals, mothers, partners and as women. The School provides our students with female role models who have juggled careers, children, study and life’s challenges through its leadership at Board and executive staff level, through its Valedictory and Speech Day guest speakers and through its daily work. Unfortunately, despite all the improvements made over the past few decades towards establishing equal opportunity for men and women, the fact that so many women are the primary care givers for children and the aged will mean that the future for women will remain challenging and the need for women to encourage and support each other will remain paramount. Ms Bryce’s closing remarks in her Conference address echo these sentiments with optimism and passion: Educators and leaders, this is an immense responsibility you carry, as is the level of care and skill with which it must be discharged. I deeply admire your professional endeavour, your intellect, your insight, your commitment, and your resilience in an environment that, by virtue of the sheer humanness of its participants, presents unparalleled challenges for you every day. I know too the exquisite joy of being in the company of young women, witnessing their intelligence and ambition, their infectious wit and boundless generosity, their marvellous progression to adulthood … My friends, for all the complexity, negativity, and lack of sincerity that at times overshadow young women’s unfettered participation in the world, you must surely cherish the very special opportunity you have to inspire freedom from constraint. Ms Amanda Bell Reference: Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC, Opening address, 10th Annual Conference, The Alliance of Girls’ Schools Conference, Girls to Women: Links for Life, 10 June, 2006

Future Challenges for our Young Women

These observations were made by Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce, AC, Governor of Queensland in her opening address at the Alliance of Girls’ Schools Conference held at Brisbane Girls Grammar School in June this year. It was a simultaneously inspiring and challenging speech which contextualised for those principals and teachers fortunate enough to be present the world our young women find themselves part of: one that is centred on instant gratification and material wealth, one that aims to remove the teen development years and launch girls into women before their time, and one where attractive technologies do not necessarily enhance their communication and understanding, but rather distort it, short cut the thought processes and remove the reflective contemplation and considered responses we so value in a civilised world. The Conference was titled Girls to Women: Links for Life and centred on the crucial topic of mentoring and its place in educating young women and assisting them throughout their future lives and careers. A school provides potential mentors for girls in its teaching staff, co curricular coaches, alumni, parents and Your daily interactions with our young women, within and beyond the classroom, require an extraordinary mix of awareness, reflection, and careful response … The quality of these conversations, the language you use, and the messages you convey are critical to the process in which young women consciously and subconsciously engage, in order to shape and reshape their view of the world and of themselves.

Ms Amanda Bell, Her Excellency, Ms Quentin Bryce and Mrs Karen Spiller, Principal St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School

Themed Girls to Women: Links for Life the conference aimed to provide a greater understanding of some of the many issues facing educators and the young women they teach. Through presentations and workshops, delegates explored topics such as feminism, financial literacy, mentoring, health, social networks and the future of education for girls. “The conference went far beyond what is happening in the classroom. It examined the shape, shifts and changes affecting the Y generation” said Amanda Bell, “hosting such a significant conference provided an important opportunity for Girls Grammar staff to be involved both as presenters and attendees”. Among the inspiring guest speakers were Cherrell Hirst, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Brisbane Girls Grammar School; Madonna King, Presenter of the ABC Radio’s flagship morning current affairs program and weekly columnist with The Courier Mail; Erica McWilliam, Professor of Education and Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Education at QUT; Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor at the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW and Toni Thornton, Executive Director, Goldman Sachs, Queensland. In her provocative keynote address The End of Education , Joanna Mendelssohn raised questions about government policy on education and the tendency to encourage students to feel that they are customers in an emporium of teaching and learning, where everything teachers do and care for, is turned into a product. Mendelssohn argued that the commonplace linking of training with education in government departments and documents was detrimental to the pursuit of learning and a holistic education. She concluded by extolling the need for all schools to stand up for real quality in education including the qualities of understanding, compassion and wisdom, which can not be measured by the narrow confines of a ranking. A high note of the conference was the Dinner Address given by Madonna King. Drawing on her investigation of the extraordinary story of the Bali 9, Ms King focused on the important role self-esteem plays in the development of girls and young women.

board members. We know that for mentoring to be successful there needs to be a rapport between both parties and for girls this is a critical ingredient. Women like to engage with each other and the active, respectful, happy relationship between them is where the mentoring process really becomes productive and can form the foundation for a lifelong connection and friendship. To understand the particular way girls learn, is to also understand the way they respond to mentoring and the context in which they can best approach their future world. We know that for girls to learn optimally they need to feel valued, have a sense of belonging and have the confidence to experiment, push their potential, experience disappointment and failure — but in failing have the resilience to bounce back and try again, albeit in a different way. In other words, the social and emotional connections are just as important for them as the intellectual engagement and challenge — conditions necessary to create the atmosphere for a young woman to thrive. Similarly women work well together; they enjoy the company, conversation and

collaboration. Unfortunately, they often don’t back themselves — especially when it comes to leadership opportunities and career advancement. At Girls Grammar we seek to overcome the former in our students by appointing girls to leadership positions in pairs, thereby encouraging them to take responsibility, but with another, and to learn to co-operate with each other to achieve their combined goals and best outcomes. Overcoming the latter is more difficult and does require consistent, active consideration and often direct mentoring. Our alumni programmes, such as the on-going provision of tertiary study advice, networking events and mentor breakfasts, help to provide avenues for assisting our graduates during the formation of their career paths. For our staff we provide opportunities for them to access positions of added responsibility and middle management roles by merit, and we actively encourage young women to apply for them. We do this for those in whom we see potential and because there is great value in them preparing the expression of interest as it not only highlights in black and white their skills and attributes, but simultaneously reinforces their personal confidence. The

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