Happy New Year (twice)

It is a curious feeling to be heading towards 2021 in Thailand and wishing all a Happy New Year knowing that Songkran is still four months away.  

The throwing of water in April is always deeply symbolic in marking a new year as well as great fun, and a way of restarting things for many.  We could all do with a restart.  An opportunity to put 2020 and COVID19 behind us.  We are then uniquely blessed at Shrewsbury to celebrate the start of two years - the Gregorian calendar restarting in January, and the Thai celebration in April.

So, we get two chances to wash away the memory of a most difficult time.  We get two chances to step forward in our new lives.  We get two chances to bless each other with good will and wishes of good fortune.  

In recent weeks I have shared much with the community about 2021, and the excitement that we will all experience at the completion of this phase of our building works.  Similarly we are excited about how our academic programmes continue to build in breadth and depth, our sport continues to push new boundaries, and music developing fresh thinking and ideas opening up a world of opportunities.  2021 has the capacity to make us all forget 2020.

However, we should not forget 2020 completely.  This community has been tested in a way that all communities were.  We are still standing, no, we are still flourishing.  To flourish is to grow in a vigorous and healthy way.  Remarkably 2020 saw this happen at Shrewsbury.  

In numbers yes, but more importantly in those programmes already described and also in the delivery of a top class musical in School of Rock.  Equally in response to the challenges of February, March and April we grew as a community.  Tackling adversity and understanding the challenges set and the solutions required.  It has been a joy to see students and staff grow and flourish.  My weekly donut eating contest is a measure of all that is well in our community, and the varied and persistent membership of the Floreat club has been humbling to witness.

2020 may not have been kind to everyone, but ironically then for Shrewsbury it is a year we should recall with some fondness.  We came through, we flourished, we grew closer and stronger and we find ourselves in a great position to enjoy 2021.

I wish you all a very happy festive period, and also look forward to a new calendar year but the continuation of what is already an enormously successful academic year.
 

My last blog post, ‘The November paradox’ was nearly two weeks ago, and then I detailed the challenges of a full calendar as we come towards the end of the term.

Today I write after a rather late night celebrating the success of the cast and crew of School of Rock.  The small gathering I had in my apartment displayed the exhaustion, exhilaration, camaraderie and commitment that is necessary to deliver excellence.

School of Rock was an absolute triumph.  Eighteen months of hard labour, a changing cast, changing body shapes and voices, students learning instruments from scratch and staff brilliantly led by Ms Sanders willfully giving time to a project that we could barely believe was actually being delivered.

The story of Dewey Finn, a fraudulent no hoper who cons a class and school into forming a band, eschewing the traditional curriculum in the process, might not seem the obvious choice for the leading academic school in Thailand.  Yet the story of School of Rock is so important to us.  It reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously.  It reminds us that life is about balance.  It reminds us that music has real value in all our lives, and it reminds us how music makes us feel.

An anonymous member of the leadership team and I both confessed to a consistent struggle during the performance last night, to keep control of our emotions.  The visceral performances, the context of the near abandonment of this show and the extraordinary talents and skills of cast and crew brought joy and happiness to so many over three nights.  Wow!

This show comes during that intense period I alluded to a few weeks ago.  The Music Scholars played quite beautifully at The Peninsula hotel seven days ago - a calming and soothing experience made all the more enjoyable by the wonderful venue.  The New Staff Recital showcased the effortless power of Mr Archibald, the stunning intensity of Mr Watkins and Ms Calvert and the quiet brilliance of Mr Jay.  

On each occasion, the power of music has spoken to us.  It has filled us with pride as we are personally connected with all involved, and in our own private ways has allowed us to think positively about all that is to come. Music lifts the spirits, a tonic for the harder times and an expression of joy and emotion that moves us and inspires us.  

Music at Shrewsbury is in good health.  Talent abounds and in a recent review we have settled upon ‘inspiring young musicians’ as the clear yet ambiguous mission statement.  We intend to inspire them, and we intend to surround ourselves with inspiring people and sounds, and as well as climbing ‘Mount Rock’ we intend to scale the heights of all types of performance by delivering an outstanding music curriculum.  As we move forward, you’ll want to ‘be in the band’.

It may have come to your attention that due to the way term dates fall, November is often the only month in a calendar year where there is not a school holiday.

In the UK this is a testing time, cold and damp with little light at the end of the metaphorical or physical tunnel.  At Shrewsbury Riverside we don’t have the elements to contend with so much, but instead we are well past the halfway mark of what is always the longest and most gruelling term for students and teachers alike.

The paradox is that with a full month in school and as fatigue becomes a consideration, we become our busiest.  It is therefore a joy to write about the fact that ‘post COVID’ Riverside is in the middle of a period of intense activity that reminds us what ‘normal’ education should look like and what November can feel like.

The richness of the variety of events is quite remarkable.  Sport has always been central to November as so many teams contest their BISAC finals (successfully!).  Legions of Bronze IA students are marching round Bangkok, School of Rock is coming to an overdue but hotly anticipated crescendo and the music department are embarking on a series of high profile events and performances including staff recitals, remembrance, and the scholars concert - imagine if we hadn’t moved Last Night of the Proms!

However, the co-curricular activities are only one part of the story.  The Extended Project Qualification served up a smorgasbord of wonderful presentations and artefacts, Dr Clarke’s colloquia are quickly becoming a part of what we do, and the applications to higher education and examinations rumble on in the background for so many students.  Across the Junior School, work continues at a furious pace in developing class assemblies, wonderful project work and a series of themed moments that bring a joy of learning to all.

All of this brings a continued strength to our community and the more shared success we have, the closer those bonds grow.  These are so important when times are tough and are reflected so clearly in how members of our community support each other in those difficult moments.

So, as difficult as a month without holidays can be - it's not so hard is it?
 

This week we held Speech Day for Y3-6 from the 2019/20 academic year.  Now in Y4-7, they enjoyed an excellent event celebrating all that is good at Shrewsbury.  

Here is my address:

We gather today rather later than planned, and rather fewer in number than we’d like to celebrate.  To celebrate 

• Academic excellence
• Effort and improvement
• Diligence
• Language
• Citizenship
• Leadership

And we celebrate all students who have made a significant contribution to our community.  A community that has been tested through the course of last academic year in a way that none of us could have predicted or expected.  

Tested not in an academic sense, but in a physical and mental sense.  Tested by the unknown.  Our patience, resilience and friendships have been tested.  Our adaptability, flexibility and capacity to deliver on our traditions has been tested.  Yet here we are on Speech Day, celebrating your incredible success, preserving a tradition, but in a new way.

As a historian I love to look to the past, and enjoy the way that Shrewsbury has already in 17 years established traditions and histories. I hear these when I meet the alumni, see them in events we hold and ways of working that have become embedded across our school.

Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg wins the prize for the first result when you google ‘quotes on tradition’ and I rather like his take that ‘cultures grow on the vines of tradition’.  It works well for Shrewsbury, our culture of academic success, sporting engagement, musical creativity and much more besides growing on the vines of excellent teaching, youthful enthusiasm and wide ranging opportunity. 

Poet TS Eliot explained that tradition is how the vitality of the past enriches the present, and in thinking of this I say a huge thank you to Miss Weston, and all the junior staff who left us last year and could not be part of this day.  Those people do enrich the present and their contribution is both profound and appreciated.  

The staff of the present are ones we appreciate too.  Diligent preparation, skilful delivery of lessons, enthusiasm and engagement characterise a group of staff we are indebted to have.  They make your lives richer, as you do theirs and they inspire you to go on to achieve the success you already have and may do yet in the future.  They value the traditions and history of the school, and yet much like Mrs O’Brien and the junior leadership team, they look resolutely forward.

Over recent months, this approach has been vital.  Schools based in traditional ways, with leadership hamstrung by the pressure of what came before, have found this period profoundly challenging.  Shrewsbury has found this period challenging too, but we are not hampered by the past.  Instead we are liberated by fresh thinking and agile minds.

You are a model to us in this, as we see your adaptability and flexibility in all you do.  From the Y3 science fair, to the Y5 balloon debate and the Fairbairn Exhibition we have plenty of evidence and support for a tradition of critical thinking able to challenge the status quo in thoughtful and intelligent ways.

This should not surprise anyone, as we are careful to ensure that students at Shrewsbury have true understanding of what they are learning, and all of you will know that the real value of history (or tradition) is that you learn from it and are able to move forward with success.

In doing so we find ourselves at the intersection of history and the future, almost every day.  This is of course true of any point in time, and yet has never felt so prescient in education as it does now.

At a recent Floreat (my Friday breaktime excuse to eat doughnuts) a student asked me ‘Mr Seal, what do you do?’  This question had me flummoxed.  Ever looking for a relatively amusing response I persuaded my young questioner that I did absolutely nothing.  Just wandered around observing what is going on, without making any real input, and then invited various groups into my office to eat doughnuts.

On reflection this is only partly untrue.  I don’t teach, coach a sport, serve lunch, check ID at the gates or any number of other worthy roles.  Instead I observe, think, and guide.  But perhaps most importantly I learn.  In recent months I've felt like I’ve had to relearn all that I know about leadership and education.  But along the way I might have forgotten my history for a time.  

In 2019 at speech day I spoke about failure, something we’ve seen a fair bit of recently.  Then I suggested that the key lesson was not how to deal with it, but instead what we might learn.

• What will we learn about ourselves? 
• what will we learn about each other? 
• and how will it help me moving forward?

 For failure now read adversity or COVID.  My conclusion then was that it is the strength of community that is primarily what binds us all together, and sustains us through difficulty.  We come together in times of difficulty (zoom crucial in this now) and celebrate when times are good.  Traditions and history help us with this, but are not the reasons for doing so.   

Expat or Thai, we come together as one for the purpose of education for all.  An education that should include stretch, challenge, critical thought, compassion, adaptability and flexibility.  An education that can manage the intersection of the past and the future, and possibly even suggest a future as we might through our groundbreaking work in so many fields.  It was a noble purpose in 1552 when Shrewsbury UK was founded, it is a noble purpose now.

Today we celebrate our prize winners, who have in their own way dealt with challenge, but now sit here at a point of success.  It might be fleeting, it might be the start of something great, but know that your entire school supports you and celebrates what you do.  

Well done everyone.