Over the past few weeks at Illawarra, the boarding community has acknowledged two important weeks on our calendar – Celebrating National Boarding Week (16-22 May 2021) and Recognising Reconciliation Week (27 May-3 June 2021).

Each year in mid-May, all of the boarding schools throughout Australia take part in a variety of activities to celebrate National Boarding Week. In its inaugural year it was decided that if each boarder in Australia (then about 25,000) walked or ran 1 kilometre – the combined total would be roughly the perimeter of Australia. Hence the Boarders’ Run around Australia was born. Each year schools and state groups come up with different ideas which are posted on various social media platforms.

This year the Boarding Captains, Gabrielle (Gabi) Fellows and Ru Yan (Megan) Ong helped by Tabitha Manson, took over the School’s Instagram page and posted life at Illawarra on the evening of Thursday 20 May. We also had a boarding quiz at dinner based on the statistics on boarding in 2021.

• Total number of boarders in Australia – 19,737
• Number of girl boarders  –  9315
• Number of boys boarding  – 10554
• Number of indigenous boarders – 3631
• Total number of boarding schools – 201
• State with the most boarding schools – Queensland with 54
• Number of boarding schools in Victoria – 29 (can you name all of them?)

This week (although in lockdown) we still managed to recognise Reconciliation Week. One of our Boarding Captains, Gabi gave a speech in School Assembly about the significance of Reconciliation Week and what we as a School have committed to as part of our Reconciliation Action Plan. On Monday night at Illawarra all 16 boarders who have stayed at Illawarra during lockdown came together in a yarning circle on the carpet in the lobby to learn about why we have Reconciliation Week and to participate in a yarning circle activity.

What is a yarning circle? It offers participants the opportunity to practise the art of speaking from the heart. It uses a talking piece (in our case a small piece of wood) to make it clear who is talking and who is listening. The student who holds the talking piece speaks spontaneously from their own experience, is concise, while others listen with an open heart without judgement or preconceived ideas.

During this week of lockdown at Illawarra we have held an activity each weeknight before dinner to check how everyone is going and to share some laughs and chocolate. It has been wonderful to see a number of student run activities as part of this important week.

Reference: www.schoolsreconciliationchallenge.org.au