Our Mercy Values Guide Our School – Jennifer Oaten

Catherine McAuley, our foundress, lived a life of service, guided by values. She showed kindness and compassion to all she met each day, particularly the sick and vulnerable. Throughout her life, she worked to ensure that women and children were protected, safely housed, educated, and empowered with skills that helped restore their dignity. She is an excellent example of a life lived, guided by values.

Values can be defined as principles that guide our thinking and behaviour.  Our Mercy values keep us close to the beliefs we consider essential and guide our actions, decisions, and all that we do at Santa Maria College.

Our values are not only the foundation of College life, but they are also highly valued in the wider community. If we can instil the Mercy values in our students, so they live their lives based on values, we can endeavour to change our world’s ethical nature little by little.

Over the past months, we have reviewed our values and redefined them to ensure the language is contemporary and relevant to students. During their journey at the College, we hope all students learn to understand and live our Mercy values in their daily lives.

Our newly defined Mercy values are shared with our community for the first time today.

We have developed a downloadable version of our values for you. We would love our parents to partner with us in using these values in daily life at home with your daughters.

Download the Mercy values HERE

Each year the College focusses on one of the Mercy values and this year’s value is Justice.

We believe values become deeply instilled through discussion and are more likely to inform behaviour and actions when students become familiar and comfortable with the language explaining what they mean.

I ask the following questions of you.

  • What are your family values?
  • Have you had this discussion with your children about your values?

We all have a responsibility to make a difference in the world, even just in small ways. Living a life based on values, whether they be our Mercy values or your own family values, is a way we can all make our world a better place.

What A Term! So Many Opportunities – Jennifer Oaten

As I look back on the past nine weeks, I am so grateful for who we are as a community and what we have achieved. Through the dedication of our staff and the enthusiasm of our students, we have established new connections, immersed ourselves in opportunities and worked through challenges.

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