Mount Alvernia College welcomes 2023 Australian of the Year!
Date Published: 20 March 2023
On Sunday 19 March, Mount Alvernia College proudly launched The Literacy Society.
We all know how important it is that we are strong readers and writers but in our contemporary world, literacy is much more than mastering reading and writing. It also includes information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy and visual literacy.
Being literate, means you can use these environments and create in them. But it also means more than that. It means that you can critically evaluate the messages being pushed at you from these environments – and you then have control of the impact of these messages rather than be manipulated by them. As educators, it is very important to us that our students master this broad set of skills. And we put our heads together and came up with the idea of The Literacy Society.
To launch The Literacy Society, Mount Alvernia College wanted to offer something really amazing for our students and community and yesterday’s event was the culmination of pitching ideas to get support for this, applying for grants, and a lot of planning. From the beginning, the College had the idea that Taryn Brumfitt would be the perfect person to have as a keynote speaker. Stars aligned and the passionate thought leader behind the Body Image Movement, Director of the inspiring documentary Embrace seen in over 190 countries, and a four-times bestselling author spoke to the Mount Alvernia College community on Sunday 19th of March.
A few phrases that Taryn spoke to really stuck with the audience and it’s Mount Alvernia’s hope that all of Brisbane are kind to their bodies today (and everyday) after reading these few key takeaways:
– Our body is not an ornament, it’s the vehicle we use to do the things we want to.
– To love our bodies just a little bit more, because it feels great to love our bodies unconditionally, and you can’t look after something you don’t love.
– A reminder that kind persistence to how we feel about our bodies defeats resistance
– It takes just seven minutes for social media to have a negative impact on wellbeing. Taryn offered students strategies for being in control of social media and who they are letting into their life rather than being controlled by it, she said to “use features like mute, delete, and block to remove negative influences on social media”. Taryn also said that we need to stop comparing our “behind the scenes with someone else’s highlight reel”.
We extend our thanks to the hundreds of community members that attended this event and we look forward to sharing news about the 2024 IWD brunch soon!
