Daisy Turnbull, Director of Coeducation

Dear Parents and Carers,

Coeducation update – Leadership & Trivial Pursuits 

As Year 11 commence their leadership journeys with the prefect selection process, I spoke with them about the importance they have as the leaders at Cranbrook in our inaugural coeducational year. I used the analogy of how gender changes in romance languages in groups. For example, in Italian, ragazza is one girl, ragazzemore than one girl. But if one boy, or ragazzo, shows up in a group, then it defaults to ragazzi. While I found this strange as a student, for coeducation it serves to remind us that while not everyone will be in a coeducational cohort, the whole school needs to be, think, and act coeducationally. We discussed how conversations, and ‘teachable moments’ with peers can have a real impact on behaviour and culture. 

I have every confidence that our current Year 11s will lead us through the first year of coeducation with great integrity and spirit. This spirit was on show on Wednesday night when some of our Year 11 Student Coeducation Committee hosted over 100 Year 10s including the incoming girls for some trivia and dinner. We were very lucky that Dr Johnstone was able to join us to speak to all the students and have an opportunity to meet some of our Year 10s and incoming Year 11 girls. We also heard from Mr Nolan our Director of Service, who spoke to students about the service program at Cranbrook, as well as contributing some curly trivia questions. 

Congratulations to Cutler (first place), Hewan (second place) and Wakehurst (third place). A special thank you to Slade Keating, Charlie Harris, Max Scales, and Ed Chubb as well as the other members of the Student Coeducation committee who ran the Trivia night. And to Mrs Stone, Mrs Nilon, and Mrs Fisher, who were instrumental in ensuring phones were not touched during trivia! 

We look forward to hosting more coeducational events in the coming weeks and months. 

Daisy Turnbull
Director of Coeducation