Page 44 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 44
44
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Jack Leahy prefecting
COMMUNITY – THE ESSENCE.
Once a small community of ity-two students and a handful of Jesuits and lay staf, Gonzaga
now numbers over 550 pupils and over forty teaching staf – female and male in almost equal
proporions, and including only one full-ime member of the Society of Jesus.
Despite its size, it remains genuinely and remarkably a community. Members of the early
classes speak with a proprietorial, and almost protecive, air of fondness for their school; their
early mentors are regarded as men who shaped them for life. The same is true of the most
recent graduates. There is a sense of belonging and ownership, of pleasure in being associated
with their school. Not universally, of course, but among the vast majority. There is a loyalty to
each other; not alone to members of their year, as seen in the frequent reunions, but to Gonzaga
men in general. It is evident in the atendance at school matches by the Past, or the crowds of
his peers an actor or debater can expect to see at an event. Perhaps this coninuity of loyalsty is
because the school is only sixty years of age? Perhaps because the same family names sill appear
on the school roll? The causes are several. At Graduaion, deparing Sixth Years will always speak
of the richness of what they have received; of the tolerance for each other, the recogniion
of diferent gits, the willingness to assist their peers. These are the themes of the valedictory
addresses by school captains and vice captains. Not surprising, when someone eventually comes
to write about Fr Kennedy O’Brien it will be noted that these, along with ‘being the best that you
can be’, are the themes of his opening-of-year Homily to the school. It has been largely the work
of Kennedy to forge the links between senior and junior boys by his development of the role of
the prefects in recent years.
And Gonzaga is, uniquely, a community: of staf (teaching and non-teaching) and students.
The aricles contained in this book relect the students’ sense of the personal interest in them
shown by the men and women they have encountered here. The writers know the value of what
they have lived through; it is no accident of economic circumstances that there are so many past
pupils who have given up other professions to return to teaching, No fewer than seven of the Past
taught in Gonzaga this year. Boys will be boys and teachers will always know that beaten Friday
frustraion, but the Gonzaga teacher will generally admit that ‘this is a very unusual school’.
Michael Bevan
Michael Bevan has taught English, Greek and Lain in Gonzaga since 1972
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Jack Leahy prefecting
COMMUNITY – THE ESSENCE.
Once a small community of ity-two students and a handful of Jesuits and lay staf, Gonzaga
now numbers over 550 pupils and over forty teaching staf – female and male in almost equal
proporions, and including only one full-ime member of the Society of Jesus.
Despite its size, it remains genuinely and remarkably a community. Members of the early
classes speak with a proprietorial, and almost protecive, air of fondness for their school; their
early mentors are regarded as men who shaped them for life. The same is true of the most
recent graduates. There is a sense of belonging and ownership, of pleasure in being associated
with their school. Not universally, of course, but among the vast majority. There is a loyalty to
each other; not alone to members of their year, as seen in the frequent reunions, but to Gonzaga
men in general. It is evident in the atendance at school matches by the Past, or the crowds of
his peers an actor or debater can expect to see at an event. Perhaps this coninuity of loyalsty is
because the school is only sixty years of age? Perhaps because the same family names sill appear
on the school roll? The causes are several. At Graduaion, deparing Sixth Years will always speak
of the richness of what they have received; of the tolerance for each other, the recogniion
of diferent gits, the willingness to assist their peers. These are the themes of the valedictory
addresses by school captains and vice captains. Not surprising, when someone eventually comes
to write about Fr Kennedy O’Brien it will be noted that these, along with ‘being the best that you
can be’, are the themes of his opening-of-year Homily to the school. It has been largely the work
of Kennedy to forge the links between senior and junior boys by his development of the role of
the prefects in recent years.
And Gonzaga is, uniquely, a community: of staf (teaching and non-teaching) and students.
The aricles contained in this book relect the students’ sense of the personal interest in them
shown by the men and women they have encountered here. The writers know the value of what
they have lived through; it is no accident of economic circumstances that there are so many past
pupils who have given up other professions to return to teaching, No fewer than seven of the Past
taught in Gonzaga this year. Boys will be boys and teachers will always know that beaten Friday
frustraion, but the Gonzaga teacher will generally admit that ‘this is a very unusual school’.
Michael Bevan
Michael Bevan has taught English, Greek and Lain in Gonzaga since 1972
