Principal/CEO Dr. Lyn Bishop BAHons (Psych), MEdAdmin, MEdStud, MBA, PhD(QLD), MAPsS, MACE, FACEL, FAIM, JP(QUAL), AIM Professional Manager of the Year 1999, Australian Entrepreneur of the Year 2002 (Social, Community, Not-For-Profit Organisation)

Dr Lyn Bishop, founder and Principal of Sheldon College operates by her mother’s favourite maxim: “Fate is what happens to you.  Destiny is what you create.” Over the past ten years, Lyn has founded and led this independent, co-educational, non-denominational College, despite the significant odds she had to overcome in establishing an independent school. Lyn’s aim in setting up her own school was to leave a legacy for children in the Redland Shire.

After 30 years with Education Queensland, in positions ranging from Principal to Deputy Executive Director of Metropolitan East Region and A/Director of Quality Assurance with Education Queensland, Lyn left the Department in 1996 to open her own school.  Her decision to do so was inspired first and foremost by her love of children.  “I made a conscious decision to leave the bureaucracy and go back to what I believe I did best, and that that was working with children.”  In 1997 she established Sheldon College, a school that caters for students from Preschool through to Year 12, based on a philosophy of Love, Laughter and Learning.

With an initial intake of 110 students, the College has now grown to more than 1450 students.  This significant growth has been achieved despite the enormity of the initial financial, competitive and bureaucratic hurdles Lyn had to overcome, including “tedious” approval processes, opposition from other schools in the district, and federal appeals.  Once she had won those initial battles, Lyn had to sell her vision of the new College to parents and teachers when it didn’t yet exist in a physical form.  Having overcome the initial challenges, and winning a federal appeal to give her approval to open the College, Lyn then faced delays in building approvals.  Refusing to lose sight of her dream, Lyn opened the College at the neighbouring Pine Lodge Equestrian Centre.

Sheldon College is now acknowledged as one of the most outstanding private schools in the country.  It is a leader in its field due to its entrepreneurial approach both as a business and as an educational institution. Sheldon College is a Company Limited by Guarantee, which has its own Articles and Memorandum of Association of the Queensland Companies Code.  It is run by a Board of Directors, all of whom serve in a voluntary and honorary capacity. Sheldon College is a not-for-profit organization, and as such, there is no profit sharing, no equity, nor any shareholder capacity. Sheldon College Ltd continues to show a profit every year, and has a cutting edge curriculum which brims with corporate alliances.  It boasts a Futures Advisory Board, which includes business, industry and academic leaders, to ensure students are exposed to global trends and real world issues. The College’s Strategic Business Units are managed by a Foundation Board.

Lyn’s entrepreneurial approach to education has seen her win the Australian Institute of Management’s Professional Manager of the Year in 2000 and the Queensland and Australian Entrepreneur of the Year for a Social, Community and Not-for-Profit Organisation in 2002.  Lyn possesses several degrees including Bachelors Degrees in Arts and Education, Masters Degrees in Educational Administration, Educational Studies, and Business Administration, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Education.  She is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management; a Fellow of the Australian College of Educational Leaders; a fully qualified Psychologist who is registered with the Queensland Psychologists’ Board and the Australian Psychological Society; and a Justice of the Peace (Qualified).

Lyn believes that good schools are built around relationships. People are at the heart of the educational enterprise.  The most critical relationship in any school is that between teacher and student, but we must also be aware that the home-school partnership is an essential one.  This is based on the premise that:

            “What the homes are, the schools will be, 
             And what the two are, the future will be.”

FOOT PRINTS ON OUR SOULS

Just being with children every day makes us all aware as teachers how fortunate we are to be called to this profession. Teaching is not a job; it is a vocation – a calling. Is there any more noble profession than teaching? In teaching we are in the memory making business. Teachers play such a critical role in the lives of children and that investment we make in our youth is repaid a thousand times over by the special footprints they leave on our souls.

• In what other profession would you have delightful young children tell you every day, “Do you know that I love you?”
• In what other profession would you tie so many hair ribbons and shoe laces daily and be repaid with a huge cuddle?
• In what other profession would you be offered a bite of a cup cake that already has the icing licked off it?
• In what other profession could you wear the same uniform day after day and be told each time that you look pretty and smell nice?
• In what other profession could you soon forget your own woes because of so many scratched knees, bumped heads, nose bleeds and upset children who need love and affection?
• In what other profession could you continually be asked to look into so many mouths to examine loose or missing teeth?
• In what other profession would you swell up with pride when because of something you did, a child learned to read and write?
• In what other profession would a group of graduating seniors line up and hug and kiss every one of their teachers as they are leaving and tell them they will never forget them for all they have done for them?
• In what other profession would you have ex-students come back and enrol their most prized possessions because they want their children to have the same experiences they had at school?

Is it any wonder we wouldn’t swap our jobs for any other in the universe? Every day children teach us some very special lessons in life. But we also have a responsibility to prepare them for their future lives.

Together, the home and the school have such a short time to prepare each child for his or her life’s journey and to help shape the script they will carry through life. We prepare them for that journey by ensuring that we provide a good home, a quality education, good work habits, strong moral and ethical values and a respect and tolerance for their fellow man. How successful we are in that regard can only be measured decades after the school bell has ceased to ring.

Dr Lyn Bishop
Principal