MLC School's Vision and Values | dare to be more podcast with Lisa Moloney

Welcome to Dare to Be More, the podcast from MLC School in Burwood City. Today we're exploring MLC School's vision and values with our special guest, Lisa Maloney, the principal of MLC School. In this episode you'll discover the core mission and values that drive this prestigious girl school, how MLC School empowers young women to become fearless thinkers, and the way the school fosters leadership and resilience in its students. MLC School is committed to empowering young women to become confident, compassionate and courageous leaders who dare to be more. I'm your host Anthony Pearl. Let's begin today's conversation. Well hello and welcome to the Dare to Be More podcast and I am delighted to have Lisa with me here today for our first episode, Lisa. Welcome to the program. It's my absolute pleasure. I'm very excited about the opportunity to check a bit about MLC School. Fantastic. Well, I think we should start by letting you introduce yourself to everybody. For sure. So I'm Lisa Maloney and I'd like to say I'm very proud principal of MLC School. This is my eight year in the role and I absolutely love it. I fell in love very quickly and that hasn't changed as the years have gone on. Just take me back to that coming into the school in the first place. What was that like? It was quite different because it was the first girl school that I have led and in fact first school school in which I have worked. I've worked in boy schools before I worked in co-educational environments. I do have four sisters so I figure I had quite a bit of all girls education just in a different way. But what I was struck by when I walked in the door, Anthony was the fact that these girls had a very strong sense of self and that I have not wavered from that belief and that's something that's I guess in the DNA of the school and I said at the time much to my daughter's surprise that if I had my time again I would have sent her to an or girl school. She had a very successful co-educational experience but seeing these girls in an environment where they knew that they could do because nobody was telling them that they couldn't has been an incredibly educational for me and I continued to inspire me every day. I love that and it's so amazing to be part I imagine of a school that has such a long history because many have come before you. Absolutely yes many great educators and people with great vision and I take that responsibility very seriously you know to make sure we stay true to who we are at the same time as looking forward into how that I guess how that legacy needs to evolve so you're sure that our girls are ready for the world that's coming for them as well and so it's a constant questioning and discussion at the executive end I guess to the whole school around how do we apply this mission that is so long held to make sure that our girls are able to be leaders in the future as well so it's a great responsibility we're also a remarkable opportunity. Talk to me a little bit about the vision and values of the school for those that may not be familiar with it what are they and what do they mean? Well it's interesting the I guess the formal statement about Michigan which I mentioned in a moment is grounded in the history of the school and the fact that the school was set up at the time we're sitting at university you know they just admitted it's first women you know and really women in academia women as lifelong winners was not something that was you know really part of part of society's expectations of women and so the school was set up with that strong belief that women had the right to education and that was quite challenging of norms in that time you know that's what that looked like and so the mission today says that our mission is to educate and inspire young women to be fearless thinkers with moral courage and compassion to be agents of changing their own lives and the lives of others so it's not just being educated for the sake of being educated this is about challenging it's about leading it's about doing so with courage but also compassion balancing that my rights and your rights and how these opportunities and education that I have have the privilege of experiencing at MLC school then translate into my life beyond school how do I use that for good both in my own life and the life of others and when I meet our old girls you know many of whom went to school they're 50 60 years ago or whether it's five 10 years ago there's a set of values and qualities that these women have and you can peel it when you're talking to them but then also in their professional and personal lives what I see is largely they are working in remarkable fields but not for the sake of themselves but for the sake of being that agent of change and bringing about good in the world and trying really hard to make their mark in a way that is both courageous and compassionate so that mission although really only in the last I guess 10 years that it's been a statement in those words that feel is very much in our DNA and so it's very exciting to see you know to see that live out in our old girls in terms of our values what we did just after I started was to go back through all the school documentation because if we didn't actually have the values such that we could write them on the wall we sort of knew who we are but we actually knew we real them off and that makes it difficult then to make sure that every girl can live those values so we did a lot of work of going through all the documentation in the history of the school what were the messages what were the themes that were coming through on a regular basis and then we consulted with our community at link there and we'll who are we and we came up with four official values and one unofficial one that I talk about as well so our official values are courage, compassion, respect and growth and we ran around it at link throughout what they look like in our school context and there but there was this other word that just kept coming up when people described the school and that was joy that our heart was this belief that we also wanted every girl to experience joy but then I guess the values police got involved and said oh yes but is joy a value you know you can't really have joy as a value so it was I guess we unofficially adopted it as our unofficial value and it is something that we strive to make part of a schooling experience and joy isn't the same as happiness it's deeper than that it has a spiritual and religious context for those who are who have a faith but it's also a deep feeling of feeling connected and feeling joyous you know and I want the girls to feel that on a regular basis when they're at school so we have our official values and we strive very hard to live those out on a daily basis and then we have joy which is just so much an important part of life's experiences particularly when they're starting out girls looking ahead it's beyond the lifetime that they've already had of the years that they're going to spend in school and that whole idea of it being joyous I imagine is something that is important for them to feel from from day one and for them to take forward moving into the future because there's nothing worse than looking back on your schooling years and not having enjoyed them absolutely that's right no I completely agree there so yes and I love the fact that you're almost daily you know as I walk around school I'm having conversations with the girls who are doing various events and so on I can feel that joy yeah I can feel that joy radiating in different settings and it's just a lovely thing to see and experience I'm interested as well because you've talked about you know what the vision is for the school and the mission and you've talked about talking to some of the old girls and but how do you actually integrate that how what how is that intertwined in the DNA what is it what's the magic source that happens throughout it's interesting we have another unofficial although it's an unofficial I guess it's a tagline which is the notion of dare to be more and it was dreamed up by somebody well before me who really wanted to take that mission and make it a living thing how do you take a mission how do you take words on a piece of paper and turn them into action and it was Barbara Stone in her time a couple of principles ago and I spoke to her about it and it was really this idea that in order to I guess to really challenge ourselves as learners as as people we do need to dare to be more in every setting you know that we need to be willing to just dip a little bit outside our comfort zone every day and dare ourselves to being more you know it's making sure that you know if I do something and I do it well I'm looking at well how could I do it even more what more could I do what else could I do and that that I think is sort of been the the great pipeline from what's written on piece of paper to what actually actually happens on a given date one of the other things that I noticed when I started was that our girls were not reluctant to talk to ask why and I've encouraged that you know that if as students they're not sure why something has been done or why a decision has been made that they are generally encouraged to ask that question with respect so it's not a tool unusual for a junior school student to make an appointment with my EA to come and have a conversation about something to ask about something it's not our girls speak it assemblyly we encourage them to get involved we seek their opinions because we do genuinely believe that they have a lot to teach us and at the same time in doing that they are doing exactly what we ask which is daring to be more by asking that their voices be heard so I think that's a large part of it it's that when we do our co-curricular and our immersion experiences and our adventure experiences that they have the chance to physically dare what happens if I try absailing as it is seven can feel you in the year can I dare myself to step out of the comfort zone for some of the girls it's going up to the highest absailing peak and dropping down as easily as anything for others is actually putting the harness on so it's providing those little opportunities both from a learning perspective but also from a practical physical perspective to just stick outside their comfort zones and to be encouraged to do that to be supported when perhaps the daring didn't work out and they didn't want it as successful as they would like encouraging them to get back up dust themselves off and try again help us to try something different to try and do something differently if they want to keep pursuing things yes look at it can sometimes be challenging because it does sometimes mean if you empower and dare teenagers sometimes I'll ask why when you don't want them to but that's also part of that's part of growing up you know you know talking earlier about twins and teenagers but it's understanding that if we want the product of girls who become women who are agents of change and who make a difference then they need to practice that when they're younger and you know sometimes they might need a little bit of guidance and how you practice that and how you do that but that's also part of learning how do you ensure that that whole idea goes through not only all of the staff that you're looking after but also the parents because they're key players in all of that as well I think that's an interesting question because I think with our staff largely they understand who we are and that's actually one of the things that they love about working with us is when I meet with new staff on the things they talk to me about all the time is the thing that love is the girls it's girls it's so ready to ask questions they're engaged they want to know why they want to learn more they want to understand and and the staff love that this is it sometimes they might think oh yeah you know I say if they were just sitting just be called but very real it is that happen I think for parents sometimes it can be a little bit challenging because it does mean that sometimes their daughters might fail because if you are continually challenging yourself and I guess I go back to when babies walk in order to learn to walk a baby has to do it to stand up and try and we'll fall over and we might need to help them up sometimes they'll call back up themselves but by continuing to keep going even after what could be seen as value in the first instance they will grow and they will become they will become walkers and learning is like that learning in an environment where we're daring them to be more is like that and so sometimes it can be challenging for parents if they think their daughter has failed it's a mindset around okay so that's an opportunity for growth that we really have to encourage and support as opposed to something is wrong because what we know is the greatest learning comes from when we do try something different we try something that we're not comfortable with we may fail so with them with support we work out what to do differently and we continue to improve until such time as we can do something or we've achieved whatever it is that we want to achieve so our parents know who we are they absolutely you know they often tell me the dear to be more as part of why they wanted to join the community but it does sometimes take an education to understand that means sometimes that not everything is going to be 100% perfect every time because we're actually always trying to improve and that does sometimes mean that sometimes we need to just about side the comfort zone and sometimes it doesn't work so it's very interesting there's a lot of talk these days about resilience and leadership but I'm interested in how that has actually played out in what you've seen in students what are the stories that you can tell about the it happening in school and post school life but there are many of those yes and it's interesting because I think our as I was saying earlier I think sometimes our instinct is to not want children to fail and not want them to experience difficulties but guess what I've seen time and time again is sadly we don't know what the world brings for children or for people as they move through life and sometimes it does get tough and it is really really important that as young people they learn to manage the little difficulties the little disappointments the little things that go wrong and to to work out how to overcome those and I guess develop that resilience I guess that we hear people talking about so much so that when the big things do happen as inevitably they do in all our lives they can go on those that self-rolling in those experiences to work out then how to navigate and how do I change balls how do I pick myself up what do I do about that and I think that that translates into leadership that's I think the best leaders are those who are resilient to are able to look at a situation and say well look it may not have gone as well would be liked this time or how we imagined it would go this time but what we can do is try xy and z you know we can do it it's motivating people bringing people along and I think that those I guess if we tie it all together that daring to be more approach to life meaning that we do allow children to to have those little upsets and disappointments which means they then build the resilience over time means that as they then move into the world of work and show themselves to be adaptable and capable and resilient and able to take things on means people seeing them those leadership qualities and those things that will enable them to bring about change and that they then are seen as the leaders of tomorrow and they can then use all those skills to then go on and be that agent of change that we're so much wanting them to be as a consequence of their mlc education and certainly in all forms of work and life I see all girls as it's have said previously are leading and making a difference in their world you know and that starts young it starts at school with starts with a student who didn't think she could found out that she can issue puts in a right efforts that she could manage to get up after something doesn't go as well as she would like. Lisa just to wrap things up something we're going to carry throughout the podcast series and it's something that you've just touched on a few times is there to be more but in the context of you and your role as principal what does there to be more mean to you and how you approach things. Look it does sometimes mean that I have to take a step back from perhaps what I want. Lisa personally wants to think about the bigger picture of education, the bigger picture of schooling. What it is that our girls will need as they go on into the world and how it is that we're going to equip them for that. So it does mean sometimes I need to perhaps make a decision that's not popular with everybody you know somebody once said that if you want to be popular as a principal you need to get a dog because the bottom line is that often we have to make decisions that may not be popular with everybody may not be approved by anybody and it does it does at times take a bit of daring to actually go no actually this is where I think we need to go. It also means as a woman and as a female leader of a girl school really sometimes standing up and saying no as women as the leader of the young women we need to do x, y or z because if we don't then women's roles and women's rights and women's contributions will continue to be either looked. So I think part of the daring in a world where many schools are going co-ed or perhaps where the world would like to think that opportunities are equal for men and women. Sometimes that daring is to actually point out to the fact that it's not I'd love it if it was but that at the moment for girls we still need environments where they can grow up free from preconceptions about what they should and shouldn't do as young women. So by the time they get out into the workforce and certain parts of the community start to tell them that what they should and shouldn't do based on their gender they already know that's actually not true they actually know that's strong sense itself they know who they are and they go out believing that they can. And so I think probably the most important part of daring I have is to make sure that we continue to promote the importance of girls schools and the importance of raising young women who know that they can. Fantastic Lisa thank you so much for being a part of the program I know we're going to have you back in the future but it's been an absolute joy hearing so much about the school the history and where it's going and the impact it's making. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on Dare to Be More. If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. Your likes and comments also help more families discover these valuable conversations. For more information about MLC school and their approach to girls education visit their website at mlcc.nsw.edu.au check out the show notes for more information. The Dare to Be More podcast is produced by podcast done for you I'm your host Anthony Purl and we invite you to join us next time as we continue to explore what it means to Dare to Be More.