The run up to Christmas is always packed full of singing. The Carol Service and the Christmas Cracker are two of my favourite school events, to me they signal the start of Christmas.
October was UK Black History Month.
Black history month was launched in 1987 led by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, a special projects officer at the Greater London Council. He was born in Ghana in 1950, in his youth, as part of Kwame Nkrumah’s Young Pioneers Movement, Addai-Sebbo travelled to study in America. While he was there, he encountered and was inspired by ‘Negro History Week’ which had been celebrated in America every February since the 1920’s.
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Last summer I read Belonging by Owen Eastwood, a performance coach who has worked with the England football team, the Ryder Cup team, and the All Blacks. Eastwood uses the Māori word whakapappa to describe the culture common in high performing groups.
Like me, I suspect that many of you spent much of the summer glued to coverage of the Olympic Games in Paris. While we all love the thrill of seeing records broken and medals won, the true spirit of the Olympics runs much deeper. The Olympics teaches us invaluable lessons about life — lessons that align with the values of the Warwick Way: courage, creativity, curiosity, perseverance, humility, and responsibility.
On 13th August 1964, shortly after 8 o’clock in the morning, Peter Anthony Allen, and Gwynne Owen Evans both died. Peter Allen was in Liverpool, Gwynne Evans in Manchester.
The Warwick Way is what makes us distinctive and special – the beliefs and values that define us. We aim to build on our pupils’ individual strengths and help them to grow into well-rounded young men: confident but not arrogant who go on to play a positive role in the world. To this end we seek to develop six values:
Curiosity, Creativity, Courage, Humility, Perseverance, Responsibility.
Last week the Communities Secretary Michael Gove laid out a new definition of extremism. Extremism is now defined as “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance”.
The line ‘Integrity is doing the right thing when, even when no one is looking.’ is commonly misattributed to the author of The Chronicles of Narnia C S Lewis. Although Lewis covered a similar theme in his work Mere Christianity the quote is actually taken from ‘Shattering the Glass Slipper’ the work of contemporary motivational speaker Charles Marshall. Whilst many of us will be familiar with work of C S Lewis far fewer, myself included will have read Marshall. Of course, the truth of an aphorism is not dependent on its authorship but the idea itself.
Last Friday was Holocaust Memorial Day. In the United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial Day is a National Day of Commemoration dedicated to remembering those who were persecuted by the Nazi’s. It is marked every year on 27 January the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This week, for the fourth time in three years, Warwick School has found itself dealing with the loss of a much-loved member of our community. Tragically Mr Robertson (Dan) lost his battle with liver cancer on Tuesday. He leaves behind a wife, our colleague, teacher, and friend Kat, and two children. I am incredibly grateful that we were able to share news of his illness with the community before the Christmas holiday. This gave those closest to him an opportunity to contact him, and I know that the messages he received from pupils meant a huge amount to him. That his last days were calm peaceful and pain free, that he enjoyed Christmas with his family, and died surrounded by those he loved, is some consolation.
The Christmas holidays are here. Every family has its own Christmas traditions. This year for the first time in 44 years I will be spending Christmas Day, not at Mum and Dad’s or the ‘in laws’ but at my house. My ‘little’ sister, the 42-year-old barrister and her family are flying over from Connecticut to spend the ‘holidays’ with us and Mum and Dad will be joining us for the day. The pressure is on. Especially because roast dinner is the crowning glory in my limited kitchen repertoire and Christmas Dinner will be my responsibility. Rather than seeking to combine three sets of Christmas traditions, an impossible task, perhaps I should set out to create new ones, ones that are uniquely ours and in doing so perhaps I should seek inspiration in celebrations from around the world.
