Providing a safe learning environment for our young people that gives them room to make mistakes, make better choices and to achieve positive outcomes, as a truly catholic community, is the bedrock of what we do at Shalom. Guidelines and guardrails are a part of that. If we are going to teach effectively, young people need to be clear about both the guidelines and the guardrails. Managing and supporting student behaviour is a big part of our job. We put a lot of time and resource into that. Having ten Heads of House, two Student Welfare staff and an Assistant Principal Student Formation, a Chaplain and three Counsellors, is testament to that. Even with all of that support, sometimes students make poor choices that disappoint both their parents and their teachers. We work hard to support students when they make bad choices. Young people are allowed to fail – sometimes often – but we hope that learnings are made. Sometimes, those learnings are not made in a timely manner. As we get towards the end of this year, my records would show that just over 30 students made a choice to leave Shalom over the course of the year following a series of poor choices. Choices have consequences and for these young people, they decided that the consequences at Shalom were more than they wanted to work through.

For many of them, repeated visits to the Responsible Thinking room (RTC) indicated an unwillingness on their part to contribute to a positive learning environment in classrooms. Others made other poor choices. I don’t like farewelling any student in those situations, but I hope and pray that most go on to make much better decisions. We are prepared to work hard with every young person at Shalom. We do not have an ‘exclusive’ entry process. We are not a ‘Private School’. We are a very public Catholic school. We certainly don’t apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach to working with our young people. Every one of them is different and more than quite a few, for so many reasons, face a tougher challenge in life than many others. We work hard with all of them but we do need students to grasp the opportunities and second chances that are put before them. In all of this, as challenging as it is, the greatest degree of success is always achieved when parents are on board and actively work with us to achieve good outcomes. To all of the very many parents at Shalom this year who have been positively supportive of the College – thank you. You make our job much more worthwhile.

Next week is our last week at Shalom. Year 10 & 11 conclude the 2023 school year at the end of this week. A range of activities have been organised for our Year 7-9 students for Monday through to Thursday next week.

Former Australian Iron Man and Australian Survivor Winner, Guy Leech will be at Shalom on Thursday of next week to introduce to our students his ‘Defib Hero’ App. Guy is passionate about teaching people, young and old, about the benefits of knowing how to resuscitate and the use of defibrillator devices. Guy recently presented to Bundaberg Principals and my interest was certainly piqued after the tragedy we experienced at Shalom on the first day of this term with James Kiernan. Guy will present to our students on Thursday afternoon next week on this topic.

Mr Dan McMahon
Principal
mcmahond@shalomcollege.com