Welcome back to Term 2. I trust that our students return to school refreshed and ready for the term ahead, prepared to challenge themselves with their learning.

We have a long-time family friend called Kate. She used to teach with my wife some decades ago before she gave it away to become a real estate agent. She is tremendously successful in the real estate world, and she was an incredibly talented teacher.

I had the privilege of seeing Kate in the classroom and learned much from her as a practitioner. He students loved being in her class, but more importantly, she held high standards and ensured students were literate, numerate, and thoroughly engaged in the creative and performing arts. Kate had a mantra in her class which was “excellence does not embarrass us”. I remember well her students parroting this with monotonous regularity.

Recently I was listening to a podcast and the conversation was with someone I had never heard of: Brian Johnson (entrepreneur, CEO and philosopher). He was talking about human flourishing and discussing the word mediocrity. The etymology of mediocrity is from two Latin words “medius” – the middle, and “ocris” a rough or rugged mountain. So, to be mediocre is to be in the middle of a rugged mountain, or to be stuck in one! Clearly, no one wants therefore to be mediocre. In fact, I would suggest to be described as mediocre would be somewhat insulting!

The opposite of mediocrity is excellence. Striving for excellence rather than accepting mediocrity is life-giving and speaks to aspiration, inspiration and grit. I can only encourage our students to go out of their way to work towards excellence in their school work; to make a commitment to self-improvement, and to measure their success from one milestone to the next. Too often in Australia, we suffer from the tall poppy syndrome where like the meercat, we do not want to stand out, stick our head above the parapet lest someone chop us down or slight us for ‘having a go’. Rather, what we should be doing is applauding excellence and seeking to emulate it when it is apparent. Recognising excellence is something I think schools do quite well. I know that I am keen that our students are rewarded and acknowledged when they achieve excellence.

I heard a lame joke once (with apologies to those who drive a Ford) that goes something like this: “If we wanted to applaud mediocrity, we’d all stand around a Ford Focus and clap”. Long may we hold high expectations for student learning, and for excellence to be a hallmark of their learning, because as our friend Kate says, excellence should never embarrass us.

Dr Craig Wattam