Last week our Year 6 students travelled down to Canberra to spend time exploring our capital and understanding something of our democracy.  On their tour of Parliament House, they were complemented by the tour guide.  GPCC teacher, Mr Turner reported that, “Our guide at Parliament House said that we were the best school she’s ever had and asked us to tell our principal. She complimented their manners and their engagement in answering questions.”  What a great group of ambassadors they have been for GPCC and well done to the families who have brought them up with such good manners.

Sadly, we have a small group of students who don’t seem to have such good manners. We have been experiencing a spate of toilet vandalism in Secondary with broken equipment, toilet rolls stuffed into the toilet bowls and graffiti on the walls.  We also had some charge points in the study tables in the library ripped out of their sockets and stolen. What a contrast this is! We are on the trail of the vandals and know we will identify them and deal to them appropriately.

This is the tale of the human race.  We can rise to such heights of goodness and yet sink to such depths of depravity that it is hard to comprehend how one race can contain such contrasts within it.  For Christians the explanation is found in the story of the Bible. God created human beings as good people but able to do wrong if they so chose.  They did so choose, and brokenness entered the world and has remained. God however is a god of restoration and so provides, through his own Son, Jesus Christ, a way to restore broken humans. When we recognise our brokenness and disobedience to the Creator’s way, and seek his forgiveness, he restores us and enables us to begin again to learn how to live in accordance with his pattern for us.

Our hope for the students who are vandalising our school property, is that by being caught and confronted with their actions, they will choose to recognise that this is not the right way to live and will want to live differently. The Bible tells us that God’s laws about how to live are like a schoolmaster driving us toward what is right and confronting us with what we are doing wrong.  Not the greatest picture of a teacher perhaps but not totally off the mark.

I have been doing some cover classes lately because of staff absences and a lack of casual teachers and in every class, I encounter those who do the right thing and get on with their work and those who push the boundaries.  This is to be expected because we are all fallen and prone to disobedience. Our role as parents and teachers is to work with our children to help them see that following God’s pattern for human existence is the best way to live – he is after all our designer!

Well done to the Year 6’s who have represented all that is the best in our school and our world. We want that to be the model for all our students.

Phillip Nash