Every person, every day makes hundreds of decisions.

Some of these decisions are good, but obviously, some of the decisions we make are less than perfect upon reflection. In fact, quite often we wish we could make our decisions again. Our values underpin our decision making. At Emmanuel Christian School, over the past 18 months, we have been refining what our school values should be. Our values reflect what is important to us in life. As a school we are interested in being better able to articulate what a successful Grade 6 student looks like or what a successful Grade 10 student looks like. Although intelligence is important, we also believe that there is more to life than just being ‘smart’.

When we first revisited our values, as a school we had 13 different values! Mr Winkler and I decided that this was just too many. The following months saw a process to try and refine what it was that we wanted to see from our young people. Several Google Forms were filled out by staff and after a lengthy but productive process, we have now finalised six values. Three core values that underpin who we are as a Christian school and three other main values that should guide how we live our lives, day to day.

Emmanuel’s values are:

Our values are important. Important because they are what determine our character. Our values drive our beliefs, they affect our behaviour and influence our attitude. Our character is how other people view us and form an opinion about who we are as people.

For example, if I was in a shop and the cashier gave me too much change, what would I do? (...what would you do?) If I gave the money back, other people in the line would probably see me as being an honest person. This is how I would like to be known.

These simple acts are what people notice and are what build our character.

Let’s look more closely at Emmanuel's three main values:

Courage

Courage is the ability to keep going when times are tough. Resilience plays a big part in having courage. It doesn’t matter if past attempts in doing something have not worked out, we need to keep trying, trying different ways until we succeed. Having courage is to not give up.

Respect

Respect is about putting others needs before our own. Being respectful is being aware of how what we do impacts on others. If you are in class and are constantly calling out, your classmates (and teacher) are most likely going to get sick of you very quickly. So rather than yelling out, put your hand up and wait for the teacher to ask for your response.

Integrity

Having integrity is quite simply, doing what you know is right, even when there is no-one else around. During a Maths test, if you knew the teacher wasn’t watching, would you pass a note to your friend with the answers on it? Cheating would bring your integrity into question.

Moving forward, I am very keen to continue promoting our values more and more. You may have already noticed the awesome banners that have been adorning the driveway at school. I also have plans for a student competition that will hopefully see some artwork created by students for us to display and refer to. The Emmanuel Media Crew will also be producing some content with some recently acquired animation software that will promote our values even further. We want to see every student from Emmanuel to be seen in the public eye as students who have good, strong values. As staff, we are committed to model the school values because we want to see the best version of each and every student entrusted into our care.

Drew Roberts - Deputy Principal