We watched a rugby semi-final here at the College a week or so ago. Both schools had strong support on the sidelines from both staff and students.  However, as the game progressed, I became concerned about the increasing verbally poor behaviour of the opposition team to our boys on the field. Our boys stayed focused, but it was disheartening to see this sort of behaviour. The opposition team coach did not seem to pull the boys up on their conduct. To add to this, parents from the other school behaved in a way that wasn’t aligned with our culture and were calling out inappropriately to our coach. Obviously, our coach focused on the wellbeing of his team and ignored the comments. In this context, however, our own students on the sideline responded by asking; or in fact telling the parents to leave the coach alone, to let him do his job. To hear that our own Year 12 students stood up to these parents in support of their own teacher was so encouraging. At the end of the game, I pulled the students together, checked that they remained polite in their interactions, and thanked them for standing up to inappropriate behaviour and showing support for one of their teachers.

A week earlier I enjoyed watching a sensational game of football between ourselves and Matthew Flinders. St Andrew’s won the match, but during the course of the game a couple of our players were a little too quick to give feedback to the umpire. What made this action important to me was that the umpire was a younger St Andrew’s student, employed by SCISSA to umpire a game of senior boys. However, at the end of the game, it was one of our Year 12 students who reminded the rest of the team the importance of respect for the umpire. The boys then took it upon themselves to individually speak to and thank the umpire. It was not a big issue, but the fact that one of our senior students chose to be an upstander, to call out the behaviour of a few students was commendable and just as important to me was that the boys listened and acted. Emotion often gets in the way, no one is perfect, but to stop and reflect on their actions, and then speak to the person to remedy the situation is a life lesson.

So when I turned up to the Primary netball finals last Thursday where our enthusiastic teams and their band of supporters were keen for a win, I was on full alert! Within a few minutes, the opposition were about to score and there were a few calls of ‘miss’ from our students on the sideline. The teaching moment was right there and before I could launch in with a lecture about appropriate behaviour to an enthusiastic group of Primary students, their parents stepped right in and reminded them. We don’t call out to distract the opposition, we applaud their success, we support and respect both teams ! My role was redundant, our Primary parents had risen to the occasion and set the standards. To them and to all parents who set and model great behaviour in these situations I say thanks.

Most know of a rule in life which goes something like this, “Treat others as you would like them to treat you”. It is often called the Golden Rule and it appears in the Bible, said by Jesus as a summary of all His teachings. Children can’t learn this rule if they don’t see it consistently modelled and spoken in a wide variety of contexts. For me, our role as parents and educators is to model good character and teach acceptable and respectful behaviour.  As a College, we will continue to expect this of everyone. When I watch a sporting match, I’m a very passionate person, I love seeing our students achieve well and so yes, there are times when I also get frustrated or feel things aren’t going as well as they could. My family could also tell stories of my occasional verbal frustration when driving on the road. In fact, one of my children’s first full sentences at about two years of age, from the back seat of the car was, “get off the road!” It is in these moments that I try to pause and remind myself of my responsibility to model the behaviour that I want to see. Our society desperately needs people of character, integrity, and kindness, with more respect and more grace in so many areas of life, not just the sporting fields!

Best wishes