Director of Studies closing speech - Awards Ceremony 2019

Evening all

Thank you all for celebrating your children with us this evening: I am sure that the students cannot wait to move on to our momentous End-of-Year function, but before we hustle on to the fun, I’d like to close with a few thoughts...

To me, TIME is the biggest luxury - in whatever small measure. Time to think, to be bored (in a good way), to allow things to pass, to reflect on your past and to reconsider the things we need to change. In recent years, I've grown very attached to having time with my own thoughts; to be able to look at life through the everyday moments celebrated by the people around me.

But, how often, in the tumultuous tempo of modern daily life, do we really allow ourselves to just think? The epicurious among us draw a lot of inspiration from thinking; never forgetting the place, the moment, the subject, the object, the nature, and the era that they come from. We never forget when, how and why a thought sprung to mind and our adventure in that thought. And, due to the nature of my job, I often think about what it means to 'act like a teacher'?

Everyday we put on a one-act show when we teach; it performance art in the highest degree! We think, we mime, we act, we gesticulate, we scowl, we smile, we pause for thought, we follow a script, we unfollow a script, we take interval breaks... Teaching requires innovation, theatre and showmanship; a carefully crafted experience that (hopefully) has an audience coming back for the next scene, the next act and the next newly written play! It’s a carefully crafted experience that lingers long after theory and knowledge has passed into memory.

Every time we host a lesson, its not always about innovation, trends or fancy teaching methods, it is most often about just keeping it simple. About remembering that life is a festival of dreams and we are only sharing our knowledge of a very, very small part of it and that our imparted thoughts are only our understanding about that very small part of it! The reason for learning is to ultimately celebrate who you are and to think about who you may become. Whether learning lavishly rich content or simply curating how to sell a T-shirt, the assimilation of all learning will bring a sense of opulence and festivity to your thinking!

In the end, how you see and experience life is a choice. Your mind is a gifted storyteller. It has taken me a long time to understand that through thoughts ‘’life’’ is the story you mould and shape and create for yourself.

Have you thought about what your story will be?