Is there such a thing as ‘School Spirit’? C.G. Scott once said ‘The Human Spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it’. In week three of the college term, three year groups had the opportunity to try this theory out. With the annual Year 12, Year 10 and Year 7 cohorts, all attending Camps across different areas of the NSW Coastline.
The Year Seven camp took place in Kianinny Bush Cottages, NSW across native bushland and activities on the NSW South Pacific Ocean in Tathra. Why would the college seek to send students on these types of activities? As educators we understand that camping is a wonderful opportunity for kids to develop new skills, friendships and interests. It also gives teachers an opportunity to get to know students in a different environment outside the classroom and enables the participant to acquire new skills that can be learned while camping such as tying knots, starting camp fires, pitching tents.
This learning of new abilities are transferable skills that can help students with studies, sport, home life and future work opportunities. Students get to practice resourcefulness, creative problem solving, effective communication, and even attention to detail. Developing these skills is an asset to a student in many different ways and working with a peer group also develops team skills, breaks in new friendships and develops strong connections across different platforms.
School camps provide students with the opportunity to work with a variety of people that will nurture experiential education, build intergenerational relationships and result in a different style of learning. Teacher involvement is, of course, vital to every successful camp, with the bonds between students and teachers strengthened away from the classroom. Our students were given the opportunity to form relationships through first-hand experiences with trained, caring adult role models and experience a sense of achievement in a supervised, safe and positive environment and as a result, the Year 7 camp for 2020 was a success.
This achievement helps to build that sense of belonging and a sense of wellbeing, and being a part of the College fosters this sense of College Spirit. Understanding the importance of school spirit, is not so easy to define and even harder to measure. That’s because school spirit consists of a vast number of things from the physical environment, its staff, the values and principles it seeks to instil and what high intangible quality is in each person. Sometimes school spirit is described by our students as the feeling you get as you step into the college gates for your school’s soccer or basketball game, a College Assembly, a House competition, the school production’s final number – a true sense of belonging likened with a positive spirit to a family or close community.
In my experience School spirit is a very important dimension of what makes a up a school environment and how it empowers students to achieve to their academic potential and develop as well rounded human beings, who are able to operate in and contribute to our society. Sometimes some of these students whom have long graduated return to their place of schooling and forever speak fondly of their time at the college. In my experience, St Edmunds College and its development of school spirit happens with specific strategic planning and with a regular review process.
The process and facets in which some of the college spirit is built, is through its by-products of the mechanisms we use to build and foster relationships through participation, competition, pastoral mentorship and the development of leadership roles amongst peer, year and house levels. Other dimensions of our school spirit can be identified by students in the pride in how they wear their school uniform, the conduct towards others. And how collectively, we celebrate the individual and collective school successes.
Many times throughout a school day students would demonstrate this spirit and pride in the desire to present themselves well and demonstrating respect to the environment and further resources they use on a daily basis, not to mention their interactions with other members of the wider community.
In most recent times, school pride and school spirit has received a bad rap from the press. However; numerous studies have discovered that a positive school spirit and its climate is strongly connected to a school’s positive academic success. A study that looked at 1715 Middle and high schools attributed the success of schools overperforming was due to unusually positive school climates and the connection to their students, a holistic and academic approach.
School spirit in itself is only a word, this word is given meaning when connection occurs, connections with students, teachers, coaches, mentors, parents, principals and the world unites in harmony and with purpose. If you are not doing anything this Friday and would like to see this first hand, I suggest visiting the Junior School Swimming carnival this week as you might find a pleasant surprise of school spirit at St Edmunds College and find the answer, is there such a thing as school spirit.
Tim Macarthur
Rice Head of House