Celebrating Saint Mark

On Friday, our whole school came together to celebrate our namesake, Saint Mark. The day, with its focus on community, was a wonderful way to honour our Anglican faith, reflect on the values we hold dear and reconnect across all year levels.

Over the past 37 years, the celebrations for St Mark’s Day have remained the same, with a Church service followed by a run of some sort. This year, we began our day with a whole school Communion Service in our K-12 gathering space, the Quadrangle. In 1986, the school constituted approximately 200 students, who fitted into the old canteen area (currently the Busselton building). The 37^th St Mark’s Day Service was organised by Assistant School Chaplain Mark Davis, who, in his sermon, looked at the relevance and the meaning of our ‘badge’ (school crest) and the elements of it, which come together to instil the values of our School and the crux of what we, as a school community, are ‘playing’ for. The ‘badge’ is what unites us; we belong to the badge, we play for the badge, we work for the badge and above all, the badge reminds us that all are included and accepted because we share the same badge. Following the sermon, we were delighted with musical performances from our Early Learning Centre and choirs from the Primary and Secondary Schools. Our littlest members of the school had the older students tapping their toes and singing along to their action-packed performances.

As our history proclaims, we followed the Service with the traditional runathon. Our Primary School students headed to the Secondary Oval to complete their Lapathon, including fun challenges every two laps, to raise money for various charities. At the same time, the Secondary School students walked to Mawson Park, where they participated in the Interhouse Cross Country Carnival. With House pride running deep and valuable points on the line, our students ran their hearts out with fantastic displays of sportsmanship and determination.

Across the day, our students also participated in various activities reinforcing our School's values of service and community, including letter writing to a younger member of the School community and beautifying the school grounds. Our ELC students also delved into the history of St Mark’s, whom our Houses are named after and what our school values and motto mean.

Finally, to conclude the day, we came together as a whole school again to capture a moment in time with a drone photo.

We had a fabulous day celebrating our namesake, Saint Mark, and all the things that make our School great! Even though our school comprises many individuals and sub-schools, we are one community under one badge; we respect the badge, and we play for the badge.

You can view our washup of St Mark's Day here.