The school has marked the beginning of the school year with a number of services and ceremonies, including the leaders’ induction, new girls’ service and the matric prayer service. The celebration of these events is particularly special because of the shared commitment of teachers, girls and parents. The Summer Splash is also the first major annual sports event on our campus and it proved to be a festive community event for St Mary’s. Tomorrow we shall celebrate the matric dance.

It is my hope that these beginnings, with their promise of hope, will encourage the girls to be bold and confident in their studies and in all that they do this year. Each one of our girls is unique and I encourage them to love themselves and to embrace their unique footprints with the joy expressed in this poem.

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver

Deanne King

Head of School