Principal Profile: James Roberts, St Joseph’s School, Parramatta Park
What is most special about your school community?
Our Learning Habitats are a unique feature across all year levels. To learn and work in these spaces requires a growth mindset from students, teachers and staff. It is only by having a growth mindset that you can truly reach your potential. Our Learning Habitats form the backbone of all our success and potential.
What do you hope to achieve in your role as Principal?
To inspire students and teachers to be lifelong learners, constantly asking challenging questions; and grow a community where the good news of the gospels is plain to see and where everyone seeks to model the humanity of Jesus.
What makes you most proud to be the leader of your school community?
What makes me most proud are the teachers and staff are so capable in what they do and so committed to the school and their students. Also, how the students show so much pride in their school and have a welcoming smile for everyone.
How did your education shape you to be the person you are today?
My Catholic high school was run by an order that had seven founders – most only have one. So, they were big on building community and instilling a sense that everyone has something to offer the community. In understanding this you create a vibrant community.
What motto, affirmation or prayer do you live by?
My prayer is the prayer of Oscar Romero. My motto/affirmation (attached to the front of my diary) is a quote from Thomas Merton on Radical Discipleship:
“Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get use to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real, in the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”
What is the highlight of your career so far?
I had the privilege to be a Foundation Head of Campus in a secondary setting that provided me the opportunity to grow a Catholic school that was truly 21st century from the teaching and learning to the pastoral care, to the design and layout of the physical campus as well as the organisational structures. Growing culture from the ground up is always exciting, challenging and rewarding.
What’s the best thing about living and working in FNQ?
Teaching is and has always been hard and having taught all around Australia, I find FNQ provides the lifestyle that allows you to constantly renew your energy through access to an amazing environment and climate so that you can always be on your ‘A game’.
How would you describe ‘the Catholic school difference’?
We see all children as equal, born in the image and likeness of God, and that we seek to grow young people called through faith to make a positive difference in the world as modelled by the humanity of Jesus.
Find out more about St Joseph’s School, Parramatta Park.