Six St Joseph’s Primary school year six students will be exercising their leadership skills this year after being voted in as the school’s leaders for 2018.
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At the end of last year all staff and students in years three to six had a vote on who should lead the school and the sports houses, and there were a few surprises in store among those who were voted in.
Tori Page and Xavier Cusack are the 2018 school captains, ably supported by Penola sports captains Chloe Thomas and Jakeb Gibbins and MacKillop sports captains Phoebee Lyons and Taj Cusack.
Xavier said he’d hoped to get in but was relieved to get the votes. Her success cames as a completed shock to Tori.
“I was shaking,” she said.
Xavier also experienced some of those shaky nerves which struck him unexpectedly when he ran the first school assembly of the year. That honour now falls to Tori who will run the second assembly, and they will share assembly duties for the remainder of the year.
They also have the role of officially thanking guests of the school but the next big event on the calendar is ANZAC Day, when they and the sports captains will be up early to represent the school at the dawn service and at Memorial Hall, and to lead their school in the parade.
Each has an older brother to go to for advice, with Tori’s brother Kurt a MacKillop sports captain two years ago and Xavier’s brother John a school captain three years ago. John’s advice was to ‘just be nice, and be respectful to the teachers’.
Chloe, Jakeb, Phoebee and Taj are all sports jocks, but on a school day basis they’re running the sports sheds to ensure all borrowed equipment is dutifully returned.
Chloe sees their biggest role as encouraging all the students in their sports house to participate regardless of their skill level. She and Jakeb have their eye on securing athletics carnival honours for Penola after McKillop house won the swimming carnival (thanks to Phoebee and Taj’s leadership, of course).
They don’t quite have free rein of the school, but listen to the new rules they were impose if they had their way..
This group and their fellow year sixes are heading off to high school next year, but in the mix of career aspirations are a mechanic( Xavier), marine biologist (Tori), PE teacher or vet (Chloe), police officer (Jakeb), professional footballer (Taj) and primary school teacher (Phoebee).
Whatever their eventual career they can always look back on 2018 with pride as the year they were school captains.
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