Staying in Community, Staying Supportive

Dear Parents,

Parents and staff work in unity at Melton Christian College, because it produces a terrific outcome.

You see, when parents and staff are unified in their purpose, it creates the environment where that purpose can actually become a reality. When school communities (basically that means families and staff) don’t work together as partners, there is an opportunity missed. As a general rule, because you as parents along with your children as learners, do work together with staff, Melton Christian College is a safe, structured and supportive environment where students can focus on learning and growing.

… and that is exemplary.

I think the points to emphasise here are: firstly, that this outcome doesn’t happen automatically, it takes intentional partnership, and secondly, like every partnership, success relies on both parties. In other words, parents and staff are both contributors to the supportive environment that optimises student learning and student growth. We all need to be in this, and it won’t be sustained if one or other of us is not in ‘boots and all’.

Over something like thirty-eight years of working in schools I have seen a fair bit of everything. So let me say that when parents and staff are not seeing themselves as collaborating, the ones who lose out are not the parents, nor is it the staff who lose: when parents are critical or adversarial to staff, and when staff are unable to work in partnership with parents, the learning outcomes for students are what suffers. So how crucial and how precious it is for all the adults involved in supporting a child’s learning to work supportively with each other.

There is a part of a poem in the Christian Bible that says: “How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God’s people to live together in harmony!” (it is from the book of Psalms).

We see this in action throughout our school, when God’s people; parents and staff, work and live together in harmony. You see it when there is shared, mutual respect. We see kind, caring discipline as an expression of the harmony of a kind, caring school community. In good schools, with harmonious collaboration between parents and staff; every child is valued.

If you work at this school, or if you are a parent of children at this school, you know you are onto a good thing. Let’s work diligently to protect that genuineness about our school community, because it is precious to be part of an organisation where students, parents and staff work together to help every child succeed.

Dave Gleeson, Principal