2019 Senior School Speech Night

It was a pleasure to celebrate the achievements of the Senior School students this week at Speech Night at the Melbourne Town Hall. The inclusion of all cohorts in the Senior School celebrates a trajectory of learning that starts significantly before VCE. You can view the full list of Award Recipients here.

On the evening, it was with much pleasure that I announced the sixth and seventh recipients of the Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award. The teachers at St Catherine’s School are the architects for learning. The quality of the conversations, the language we use, and the messages we convey are critical to the process in which young women develop views of the world and of themselves.

This award is peer nominated and recognises:

  • Consistent and dedicated service to teaching
  • Achieves excellent student outcomes
  • A willingness to share successful teaching and learning strategies.

Our first recipient was Ms Sarah Bethune, a deeply passionate teacher, working at St Catherine’s for almost 20 years. Sarah is known for her warm, intuitive and calm manner and she leads by example for her colleagues and all of our community. Sarah’s curriculum knowledge is exemplary and the wonderful learning environment she creates inspires the children in her care. Undoubtedly, she starts a learning trajectory that continues throughout their schooling life.

The second award recognised the contribution of Mrs Melissa Braddy, a teacher who commenced at St Catherine’s 25 years ago. Melissa’s commitment to the School and the students in her care is unwavering. She consistently goes above and beyond her role to support students – and often their parents. As a teacher and Head of Year, Sarah has guided many girls through often-challenging times during their adolescence but ultimately finishes each year by encouraging girls with a good old, Dr Seuss quote, “You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting – so get on your way!”

Mrs Melissa Braddy and Ms Sarah Bethune, the recipients of the Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award.

These two women, both so highly regarded in our school, book end the learning journey at St Catherine’s from the Early Learning Centre to Year 12.

Indeed, Speech Night is also a celebration of our Year 12 girls and an opportunity to acknowledge and applaud their outstanding achievements and their unique and diverse talents. The evening provided an opportunity for our departing School Captains, Kavina Kalaichelvam and Georgina Cottrill, to provide their final address. I provide sections from their speeches for your reading pleasure:

Georgina Cottrill, 2019 School Co-Captain

Good evening and welcome to Speech Night 2019! It is quite an honour to be able to speak to you all tonight; one of the first school events for some and one of many for others. Although, something about this evening feels special. One of those rare glimpses in time in which we can stop, sit still in this world characterised by perpetual movement, and appreciate this. Appreciate the education we have received, appreciate our incredible teachers, and most importantly, appreciate those sitting next to us; the St Catherine’s community and friends that could never quite be manufactured elsewhere.

I suppose tonight feels particularly special as a Year 12 student, the last time we will all be together, sporting those classic and ever-referenced blue ribbons – that I am sure will not be appearing over summer. But I think there is something more than simply this notion of finality that is distinguished. With all authenticity, I believe it is because this is a celebration of what has been a monumental year for all of us, Year 7s to 12s, teachers to parents, even the heart of St Catherine’s, Sherren House, had a makeover. Sherren House is in fact quite a good analogy for 2019, our fundamental structure and St Catherine’s values have not changed, but the determination, intellectual and physical vigour, and kindness feels unprecedented.

As many of you know, I may have a minor celebrity crush on Julie Bishop. I know most people are not into politics, as my conversations on the topic were all too often silenced within the Common Room, although there is one very ‘un-political’ quote of hers that struck a chord – during my verging on ‘stalker-ish’ internet searches. In fact, this is a quote from the ‘good old days’; a time in which the parents sitting in the audience did not have such a grand responsibility, i.e. us students. In 1998 Bishop said: “I have always had an intense conviction that individuals can make a difference to the life of their times.” I interpret this not so much in the sense that we must make grand gestures or change the entire world, but instead, to make a difference within our lives. Meaning, a difference to the life, people and environment that is constantly rotating around us. And this is something I believe every person here has done. From parents making incredible sacrifices to send us to this School, to teachers bringing in the occasional edible treat to get us through the coming week, to us girls doing something as simple as giving a smile or ‘hello’.

As odd as this may sound, there is an aura of comfort at St Catherine’s. I was in the city celebrating the end of exams (took long enough) and received many faces displaying seriousness and almost contempt. It made me realise what I have taken for granted here. The warmth of smiles, even from the teacher on duty telling you off for not wearing your blazer, or your friend who knows you certainly did not pass that Methods SAC, is in the strangest way, quite life-changing. It is an unspoken safety net of support and security that our cohort will certainly miss when moving out into the deep dark abyss of the ‘real world’. However, every one of us will always take with us this ability to make the most simple and small actions benefit the life around us.

This sense of comfort can be encapsulated in a single word, ‘one’. A notion of united spirit and support for one another, as we have succeeded as individuals, but more importantly, made it through 2019 as one invincible body.

Kavina Kalaichelvam, 2019 School Co-Captain

Teenage girls are infamous for many things.

As I address you all for what will be my final time, I cannot help but think that there is a bit of teen girl within all of us, parents, students and teachers alike: it is our inherent need to be heard, and a desire to be better every day. Perhaps, then, we ought to abandon the social shackles of what it means to be a teen girl and redefine it by what we know and experience it to be here at St Catherine’s: unapologetically loud and passionate, tenacious and vivacious, unable to be silenced and always flaming with great possibility.

And tonight this is more evident than ever. While we cheer on our friends as they grace this stage, we get to do so sitting next to some of the people who mean the most to us. Tonight is not just a celebration of a few, but of St Catherine’s in 2019, of a school that was not just a community, but a team that collectively collapsed expectations of what it meant to be a teenage girl.

Whether it was the modelling of pants, the cutting of hair or trips far away from home, St Catherine’s girls have relentlessly shown what it means to be strong. Of what it means to not necessarily know your place in this world just yet but to make damn good efforts in pursuit. It is a continuous process of becoming, of knowing and learning and laughing and loving, and that is something we can forever thank the teachers and leadership team for. Their commitment to building a school that does not characterise education as linear, but embraces all its quirks and life-teaching moments. They introduce each girl to their own voices, give stage to all that we have to offer, let our stories and talents become the very ladders that help us reach the stars. We wholeheartedly thank you.

St Catherine’s has raised you and I in a way we could never have expected. And this is where we, as St Catherine’s, supersede the average teenage girl. For we are not only strong as individuals, but strongest when we are together. We sit in this hall today, veins simultaneously pumping with generosity and revolution, ready to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable all at once. We are fiercely vulnerable and assuredly selfless and it is this multifacetedness that is unparalleled, my Juniors Rowing crew will tell you that as I sit next to them in my Specialist Mathematics class.

Because we are not encumbered by what we are meant to be, but unbridled by what we want to be. And that is anything. After years of puddle jumping, we the Year 12s now face the great big ocean that is life beyond 17 Heyington Place. But for now, we put the lids on the sacred highlighters teenage girls have revered since the beginning of time, sing the Ode one last time and hang up our grey dresses and blue ribbons.

How lucky I am to know you formidable individuals and how lucky was St Catherine’s to feel the force of this small yet mighty team of 2019. The world may think they know the power of teenage girls, but they do not know us.

View the complete versions of Georgina and Kavina’s speeches below.

Michelle Carroll

Mrs Michelle Carroll