Principal’s Welcome to 2025 – New Beginnings
Wishing you a warm welcome to the start of the 2025 Tintern school year! We began with a buzz of activity on the campus prior to the students commencing and that has only increased with the arrival of our nearly 1,100 students from ELC – Year 12.
As always, the start of the year is about renewal and an opportunity for self-reflection and growth. Time over the summer break, where our lives tend to slow down a little and be less purpose-driven, is an opportunity to consider both the past and coming years. It is an opportunity to establish intentions and goals for the coming year around our relationships, our learning, sport, or music, and to truly consider who we are as a person, as a citizen, and as a contributor to our world.
Entering the new year with an intention or even a set of intentions helps us ‘steer’ our approach to our life. We know that if we can also set ourselves a small number of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals that those intentions lead towards, we can map something of a path of purpose for our year, or for even longer. This process of providing both a ‘target’ and a ‘trajectory’ of intentions that lead to it, gives guidance, purpose, and meaning to our activities, helping us to stay on our considered and planned path.
However, doing this takes real thought and consideration, it requires planning and organisation and it is not something that necessarily comes easily. Our use of the Harvard Project Zero Cultures of Thinking is aimed at fostering thinking students, not just learners. Their ability to do more than know is critical in giving context and use for knowledge in our modern world. What we know is certainly important and useful, but what we can do with that knowledge is far more valued in the post-Tintern world our students will experience.
Linking our ability to think with a growth mindset (one where we acknowledge that we can be more capable, more knowledgeable, and more skilled in the future than we are now for example ‘I find French really hard, but if I keep working at it, I think I’ll get better at it.’), rather than a fixed one (where we believe if we cannot do something now, we will never be able to, for example ‘I am a bad French student’) is the path to using these intentions and goals to achieve best learning, personal growth, and overall development.
In 2025, I am producing a series of short videos in response to feedback that you would like to hear more from your Principal. Keep an eye on the portal for these regular video updates.
I wish you all a wonderful 2025, all of us working together to support the optimal development and growth of our community.
Brad Fry | Principal
