Next week will be the final week of primary school for our Year 6 students. One chapter ends for them, and another one opens. Yesterday as I watched the Lower Primary Christmas concert out on the playground lawn, I saw children beginning their primary school life. As I reflected on the efforts of our Foundations, Year 1s and Year 2s yesterday, I thought there were lessons for our Year 6s, but also for us all. I just loved the way our little ones gave it everything in their performances. Nothing was left as a half-hearted attempt. It led me to think about the second part of Martin Luther King Junior's speech I mentioned in last week's remarks.

As he spoke to those high school graduates in Philadelphia in 1967 he said, “Secondly, in your life’s blueprint, you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor....If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. And sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.’” (King, 1967)

A determination to do the very best in all we do, despite how it may compare to the efforts of others, is certainly something we want to develop in our children as well as ourselves. How many times do we find ourselves casting envious glances at other people's abilities to do something better than us, then allowing that comparison to rob us of the joy of achieving our very best. Striving for excellence and doing our very best along the way, is something we should encourage and model to our children. It is my challenge to us all this week, student, parent, family and staff to do, and be, the very that we can be at whatever task we find ourselves doing.

Earlier in my life I lived in New Zealand and during our five years there I grew a respect for the traditional Maori culture of that beautiful country. There is a traditional Maori saying that is very appropriate as we consider encouraging our children and ourselves to do our very best. It says, “Aim for the highest cloud, so if you miss it, you will hit a high mountain.”

Our first school value is Respect, the fourth is Excellence. It is interesting that these values line up closely with the first two principles of Dr King's Blueprint speech.

The Bible puts it very simply for us, Ecclesiastes 9:10 MSG "Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!”

Have a great week with your kids,

Mark B