We have five guiding pillars that support everything we do and it is well worth watching a short video explanation of what each one means in practice.

Each term, all teaching staff focus on one of these pillars. As we start a new academic year, we begin in Term 1 with a focus on ‘Living our Values’. Every school, and indeed most organisations, will have a set of values. However, our desire to authentically ‘live’ these values require us to constantly come back to them and think about how we model them ourselves, how we explain them to students and how we support students to form good habits.

The Values of Hume Anglican Grammar are: Christian, Excellence, Resilience, Respect, Integrity and Safety.

As staff prepare for the year ahead, our professional development program is focusing on the practical implications of each value. What does it mean for us? What does it mean for our students? Reflecting on the values we hold and careful preparation of how we explain and model each one helps each of us to get things right with consistency in a busy classroom. For example, taking a noble value such as ‘Excellence’ which can mean different things to different people and carefully planning how to be really concrete and clear with students about what excellence looks like in their current task. Or considering how to take a value such as ‘Integrity’ and define it clearly to our youngest students and help them to recognise and be proud of when they do the right thing. We have an understanding that mastery of the complex craft of teaching comes from preparation, habit formation and deliberate practice. Staff practicing these little phrases and techniques with one another ahead of the term will lead to joyful classrooms in the year ahead where we truly follow our aspiration of ‘Living our Values’.