School Blog

Time spent on recreation is never wasted time, it is extremely important time. The opportunity to recreate oneself in preparation for the normal routine is what allows us to fulfil the normal routine on a daily basis. The range of recreational activities on offer to adults nowadays is huge and, as I ponder on my own choices, it makes me aware that there have been many influences in my decisions and equally raises my awareness of how many young people I have influenced in my career in education.

 

All teachers will pass on their own passions unwittingly to their students. It is impossible to curb your enthusiasm and I have observed many colleagues reach an outstanding level when they are teaching something that clearly inspires them. Children are very good at responding to enthusiasm; even someone’s favourite subject will be uninspiring if taught without passion, pace and energy.

 

The best teachers will try to remain neutral on the question of their favourite subject or topic, but children are no fools and I am sure, if asked, would be able to read the tell-tale signs during the week.

 

“My teacher always allows us to ask lots of questions, she always tells us stories about her own experience, the explanations are always so clear, we always seem to spend longer on X..” etc.

Thinking about my own time in school I recall that there were teachers who were inspirational to my friends but I just didn’t catch the bug. I was motivated by other factors, namely praise and success. The people who inspired me were excellent role models but they had the advantage over my Physics and French teachers in that they could easily find reasons to praise me. My personal talents were best suited to those activities, success came easily and I became an empty vessel which my inspiring teachers could fill with knowledge, drawing out all of my potential.

 

The opportunity to socialise with like-minded people can also be a contributing factor to our choice of hobby. Certain people are drawn to activities which promote opportunities to meet new people regularly, for some they prefer small groups with regular and consistent contact, others prefer individual activities which allow space to focus and time to concentrate. Regardless of the activity, being in a group or alone, there is always the opportunity to talk about it with people who are equally passionate. Dinner tables around the country would be considerably quieter if the topics of hobbies and interests were banned.

 

Many people are influenced in recreational choices by other family members and it is of course nice when siblings share a passion, although it can lead to rivalry and the removal of board games from the home! It is highly likely that children will be encouraged by their parents to enjoy an activity that can be shared. This is common and only causes an issue when the child is taking part when they would rather be doing something else. I agree completely with a friend who willingly wakes up early every morning to take his daughter swimming before school on the premise that the alarm clock is beside her bed and that she wakes him up.

 

The environment in which the activity happens can also be a strong factor. There are those who adore the outdoors and resent free time spent indoors. Some people love being in water, some in the sky, a library can appeal as can a sports field, a fast pace or a slow pace; the list is very long. It can sometimes take many years for a perfectly matched environment to be experienced, which leads to what I see as the most important factor for schools and parents to remember – variety.

 

Variety of opportunities is most certainly required throughout childhood to enable young people to find their passion. It must be evident in the curriculum so that the classroom experience is wide ranging and full of opportunities for passions to develop. Outside of the classroom there needs to be a co-curricular offer which is balanced across the most common recreational fields including Creative Arts, Sport and  Music. Ensuring this alongside passionate teachers and leaders is a recipe for the correct recreational decisions to be made and all of the positive benefits they will provide in the future.

 

Many people will move between hobbies and new passions will be discovered as people mature and travel, however the process most definitely starts in school and is an important aspect that we must never disregard.

 

Ross Urquhart, Head of Junior School

How many times have you heard the phrase ‘…with a nod towards…’, ‘…heavily influenced by…’ or ‘…has borrowed from…’? We hear this in galleries and when reading about Art and Design but how are these connections formed and why? The process of connecting is inevitable because Art surrounds and influences us in our daily lives through what we see. The girls in school use similarities and differences between artists and designers as starting points for their investigations. As a teacher, it is interesting to see how this process unfolds in the classroom and through independent study.

Graphics and Advertising are perfect examples of how ideas interrelate and share characteristics. Consider the Warhol influence in a Marmite poster where the famous jar is repeated four times, mirroring the classic compositional device used by the Pop artist in his ‘Elvis’ series below. U4N and U4H girls are currently using Pop Art devices in their ‘Animals’ project with Mr Laubscher.

We can also use Christian Dior as an example where a perfume advertisement for ‘Dune’ borrows ideas and dual meanings from the photographer Bill Brandt, both using the female form to signify the curves of pebbles, features or sand dunes on a beach. Dior’s woman is an abstraction of the coastal landscape. A surreal image is created, as the eyebrow and lash are the only clues we have to identify it as essentially feminine. The scent is evocative of a dune, signifying open air and freshness. As a viewer and potential consumer we are lured into this world of persuasion that plays on our daydreams, offering us an improved alternative to what we signify in life. Our desire makes us momentarily envy and fantasise about an improved self-image; it is precisely this process that motivates consumerism. Dior and Brandt investigate form and shape and their ambiguities. Additionally, both play on the Surrealism of Dali who also used human forms to play tricks on the viewer.

Artists frequently rely on what has come before them and, whether working as solitary practitioners or grouping with contemporaries to form Movements, we see these connections through subject matter, techniques or concept.

Monet and Renoir worked alongside each other harmoniously and were prominent Impressionists. They both painted scenes of Parisian life, for example at La Grenouillere, where their visible brushwork on the surface of the canvas is seen now to be an accepted style but was rejected by critics at the time. Whilst we can celebrate the similar approach in technique by these two friends, a marked difference between them is their choice of palette. Renoir was the only Impressionist who favoured the use of pure black.

I remember an exhibition at the Tate Modern which played beautifully on the idea of similarities, and influence. Despite some work in the rooms having no obvious connection, upon closer inspection relationships emerged. ‘Waterfall Line’ was exhibited in a room entitled ‘Richard Long and Claude Monet’ in the ‘Landscape/Matter/Environment’ display. I liked the fact that the audience were invited to search and explore connections between subject matter, materials and processes. It made me think about some works that I had seen hung differently in the past (previously in different galleries) that were now playing with or against each other in the same space. The two pieces which illustrated this point for me personally were one of Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’ 1916 and Richard Long’s ‘Waterfall Line’ 2000.

‘Filling the canvas, the pond becomes a world in itself, inspiring a sense of immersion in nature. At times verging on abstraction…’ (Tate Modern on Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’).

‘…the artist slung white river mud, scrubbing and wiping it with his gloved hands to create a swirling, striped pattern resembling the trace left by an enlarged and simplified paintbrush…allowing the mud to splatter down the broader strip of black background below… A line of solid white expanding into millions of tiny dots at the very base of the work…resembles the intense spray at the base of a waterfall, where liquid hits a surface of strong resistance and is shot back upwards.’ (Tate Modern).

Both are huge pieces that consume you but nearly one hundred years separate them. Both share nature as subject matter but palette choice, application speed and style reveal their position in Art History and yet I felt their connection through their dimensions and the expressive semi abstraction which dominate both compositions. You get lost in the mark making. It was thrilling and underlined the fact that you cannot appreciate Art fully unless you view it in the flesh.

Film also plays a part in this game of influence and one of my favourite examples is the Design connection between two unlikely relatives. Fritz Lang’s ‘the False Maria’ futuristic robot in his 1927 film ‘Metropolis’ and George Lucas’ C-3PO in ‘Star Wars’

Bringing this back to school life, the girls at Northampton High School frequently connect their work to historical and contemporary sources, the Edexcel assessment objectives demand it at GCSE and A Level. Many of our painters who connect with Francis Bacon are asked to research Eisenstein’s woman screaming in ‘Battleship Potemkin.’ 1925.

 

Mel Beacroft. Head of Arts Faculty

Cara Flanagan in Psychology Review comments that ‘it is not high self-esteem that brings about good academic performance’, rather ‘it is the belief that you can acquire the necessary skills to be successful’. This sums up much of current thinking about how students can develop resourcefulness, responsibility and independence and avoid the pitfalls of a fixed mindset by developing a range of positive learning styles and dispositions.

In fact, these ideas are not a particularly new concept, in his seminal 1976 work Teaching Thinking, Edward de Bono explains that thinking and learning is about ‘knowing how to deal with situations […] planning, decision-making, looking at evidence, guessing, creativity’ as much as it is about ‘exploring experience and applying knowledge’. At Northampton High we want to support all this by fostering our students’ ability to devise and control their own learning. We aim to enhance their understanding of what drives and motivates them, for example, through our 360 Degree Me programme, which encourages them to look at themselves from all angles, as learners and individuals with distinct ambitions and potential.

Last year’s 360 Me Day proved effective in altering the students’ perceptions about what is really important to them personally, so this year we wanted to go a step further and challenge them to take responsibility for managing the learning experience for themselves. The result has been our 360 Challenge Day to take place in July at Wicksteed Park in Kettering, a charitable trust whose cultural and historic significance in the area offers rich educational possibilities for this project.

Lead organiser and Head of Biology Russell Attwood says, ‘the focus of the day will be developing the attributes that are so important for school and life in general, such as resilience, teamwork, independence, planning, time management and leadership’. Students will be working autonomously in the Park on thematic projects that they have chosen themselves, in small groups from the same House. Each group will have pupils from across Key Stage 3 which will give them the challenge of collaborating with others and Year 9 students will be given the responsibility of taking the lead and supporting the younger girls. In the weeks leading up to the project each group has been given time to plan every aspect of their day: from what they need to wear and bring with them, what and where to eat, to how they will find the information for their projects and ultimately their presentations to the rest of the House.

What would we like the students to gain from their experiences at Wicksteed Park? I would say that character and grit would appear fairly high up on the list of hoped-for advantages, along with a deeper sense of how they learn to adapt and cooperate. In terms of outcomes, we do not expect every project to be an outright triumph in terms of preparation or execution, but for learning to be really successful, according to Professor Guy Claxton, there needs to be an element of ‘uncertainty and experimentation; having a go, seeing what happens and gradually improving’. This process is essential for personal growth and develops character, which is hugely important in helping students achieve self-reliance in their learning.

A single day of challenge, albeit as part of an ongoing commitment across the school to the education of the individual student via the 360 degree philosophy, will not suffice to embed the ‘crucial attitudes and capabilities’  Claxton refers to. For this reason, we have looked to develop our wider curriculum to help create a more creative and self-reliant community of life-long learners in our school. To do this we have subtly adjusted the timetable, without having to change the overall timings of the day, through what we call the Radically Enriched Curriculum (REC). This new REC period after lunch has allowed us to reposition PSHE lessons and opens a new window for co-curricular activities where we can stretch and challenge student outlook and ambition. The timing also allows for a community of learners within the staff, with regular slots for peer-led training, discussion groups and working parties. As an important side effect, we have also been able to match up the Junior and Senior School timetables more efficiently, which we hope will lead to even more opportunities for innovative cross-phase and transition activities.

Leona Heimfeld, Stretch, Challenge and Creativity Coordinator, comments that her personal challenge ‘is to stretch the students beyond their own expectations’. She explains that this involves building ‘complexity of character, developing skills not easily learned in the curriculum-based classroom: the thrill of collaboration, the social responsibility of group work, physical and vocal self-confidence, the power of creativity and imaginative spontaneity’. The programme is geared towards providing a series of unique projects that mesh in with students’ ambitions for the future and links with our careers programme, Inspiring Futures. There is also a hugely important role for pastoral wellbeing in Leona’s opinion: ‘My studies have shown that creative projects offer much needed opportunities for de-stressing, with time to daydream and ponder reflectively’.

Essentially, by approaching this from a whole-school standpoint we give students and teachers opportunities to work together as equals. Assessment is not an agenda item within REC, so the focus is entirely on what is important to the educational process within a cooperative, flexible and yet individualised framework. We believe this will deepen the students’ enjoyment of learning through an appreciation, or ideally, a love of difficulty and challenge, a readiness to experiment and a real understanding of how to criticise and improve their work without being self-critical or negative about their potential for success. The idea of silencing the inner critic was a hot topic at this year’s Girls’ Day School Trust Conference where outgoing Chief Executive, Helen Fraser, called on students to release their ‘inner cheerleader’ instead. Likewise, for teachers, this approach is designed to encourage them to review their whole attitude to pedagogy beyond the REC programme, increasing student freedoms and allowing them to make as many decisions as possible to shape their own learning experiences.

Professor Tanya Byron, writing in the foreword to Claxton and Lucas’s book Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn, comments that we need to rethink our school systems ‘to help our children get ready for the challenges and opportunities they will face’. At Northampton High we take this role very seriously; we do encourage our students to take the 360 degree view and, in fact, this is the approach we expect everyone in the school to take when it comes to intellectual self-image. To paraphrase Professor Claxton himself, we are not in the business of ‘grinding out results’, we are an open-minded community of learners and we wish to be a mill of aspiration, individuality and creativity. These are the attributes that will get our children ready for the future.

Henry Rickman
Deputy Head

 

References:

Flanagan, Cara; in Psychology Review, Volume 1.3, February 2006

de Bono, Edward; Teaching Thinking, Penguin, 1976

Claxton, Guy; in Creative Teaching and Learning, Volume 6.2, May 2016

Claxton, Guy and Lucas, Bill; Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn, Crown House Publishing, 2015

 

When I was at school reading came under the banner of  a ” good thing” and other than the set texts in English lessons we were left pretty much to our own devices. Fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century and things have changed in many ways. One of the most striking changes has been the expansion in books produced for children and young adults; the range, number and quality available today for the average young person would have delighted the teenage me. From fantasy stories to dystopian fiction, historical fiction, adventure, crime and thrillers, as well as titles which deal with many of the issues which young people face today, the choice is pretty much endless.

What has also become clearer is how much of a “good thing” reading actually is.

 

Young people who enjoy reading very much are three times as likely to read above the level expected for their age compared with young people who do not enjoy reading at all (34.9% vs. 10.7%). Similarly, young people who read outside class daily are five times as likely to read above the expected level for their age compared with young people who never read outside class.

The National Literacy Trust

It seems obvious that if you enjoy something you will improve and the more you practice the better you become.

Whilst having a wide choice of material is a positive position to be in, the challenge within a school environment is to encourage progression, both in the type of material the girls read and in terms of complexity of language. At Northampton High School we have our own reading scheme to encourage and support girls in their reading but like many schools we also try and vary the reading opportunities available.

The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals are the UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book awards. Often described by authors and illustrators as ‘the one they want to win’ – they are the gold standard in children’s literature.’www.carnegiegreenaway.co.uk

 

Shadowing the Carnegie Award on an annual basis is one of the ways in which we provide a varied reading diet for our keen readers.  Mrs Halstead (English Teacher), a group of hugely enthusiastic girls and I began meeting on Monday mornings after Easter. The eight book shortlist this year being one of the strongest we have seen and our aim to choose the winner. The girls award marks out of ten for plot, characterisation and style for each book and we then total all marks awarded at the end of the process to discover who are our winner is. Our recent track record is a good one, having chosen “The Bunker Diary” by Kevin Brooks as the winner two years ago and “Buffalo Soldier” by Tanya Landman correctly last year. The skill being in awarding marks objectively regardless of our personal preference, though sometimes our favourite has taken the main prize!

The girls have been impressive in these sessions, last year taking part in a streamed debate with other Girls’ Day School Trust schools. The girls prepared well and their confidence visibly grew as the session went on, defending and supporting their views in an effective manner.

These are some of the comments we have had so far about the shortlisted books this year:

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge: comments on the plot – “It takes a while to get going but once it started I couldn’t put it down!”

One by Sarah Crossan: comments on style – “I don’t think that she should have written it in verse. It made it difficult to read and didn’t add anything to the story. She didn’t create mood very well, I thought it too light and easy in places for the themes”

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders: comments on characterisation – “Amazing” Comments on the plot – “gentle and composed on such a harsh topic”

 

There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake: comments on the plot – “The plot in the real world was fine however I felt that it kept being interrupted by the fantasy line which damaged the flow”

Find out more about the shortlisted books at http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/shadowing.php

The award winner will be announced on Monday 20th June so we have plenty of reading time still left, but at the moment (late May) Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders is a definite contender!  The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge won the overall Costa Award last year and should be strong competition though, so we will have to wait until the end of June to see if we pick the winner again!

All short-listed books are available to borrow from the School Library.

Ms Anne Buxton, Librarian

I remember my A Level History lessons with fondness. My teacher brought History to life in class by showing students her many slides of archaeological digs to ancient lands such as Israel, Greece and Egypt. This inspired me to visit some of these places throughout my life as an adult. I did not just want to read about them in a book but wanted to experience them like nothing else can, a chance to connect, understand, and explore objects, perceptions, feelings, and innovative thoughts. Seeing a picture can’t ever replace material engagement with an object. We can’t anticipate the kinds of questions we’ll want to ask of objects in the future, so a digital record should never take the place of an object or image. There’s no replacement for the real thing.

Recently I spent a day at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford visiting the Andy Warhol exhibition. Coming face to face with artworks of an inspirational artist whom I studied at school enabled me to understand more about his reasons for creating his art work and his interpretation of popular culture and consumerism. This experience broadened my knowledge and appreciation of the art work which made me think about how young people learn new material not just in class but through technology.

Teachers of young people are in a prime position to encourage them to widen their life experiences beyond the classroom and experience real life by bringing the classroom teaching alive and broadening their thoughts, feelings and ideas. We offer many school trips to cultural and science museums, art galleries and many more. The power and influence of ‘being there’, a real life experience compliments the curriculum taught and more importantly, enriches the learning of any student.

 

A reproduction of an artefact, whether it’s a photograph or a digital version of it, for example, can travel much further than the artefact itself. It can be in many places at once and so dramatically enrich the conversations that surround it. You lose something when you are engaging with a work of art or a specimen on a computer screen. You can’t walk around it, or touch it, or see how light plays upon its surface. It can be hard to appreciate the scale of something – whether it’s incredibly delicate or whether it dominates the room.

Digital life is so much part of society’s way of interacting with people and the world around them. This experience and way of living is only a way but not the only way. According to Jim Taylor, PhD ‘The power of prime’, a Psychology Professor at the University of San Francisco, believes that wired life is not real, meaning experiences are created by technology with the aim of ‘simulating an experience’. He goes on to explain that,

‘The problem with this “low-resolution” life is that, though it shares similarities to real life, it lacks the high resolution and the granularity of real life…..There is always something between us and our experiences’.

Susan Greenfield, a noted British neuroscientist, broadcaster and member of the House of Lords, who has studied the impact of new technology on people believes that, ‘for all of its appearance of freedom, technology puts us in a box, a very bright, shiny, and fun box to be sure, but a box nonetheless. You may think those dropdown menus give us options, but what they really do is limit choices that limit our thinking, imaginations, and actions’.

At Northampton High School, we encourage girls to be bold, creative, confident and competent women who have the skills to think, question, take risks and broaden their learning experiences.  Real life enriches our sensory experiences through sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, balance, movement, temperature and emotions. Technology has come a long way replicating these through visual graphics and sound but these are artificial and are they enough?

 

So, what do you plan to do on the weekend or on your next holiday? Visit a museum, art gallery or walk the streets of the ancient town of a foreign city? ‘Why we go to museums, or art galleries, travel to distant lands doesn’t really matter as much as what we get out of our visit. We may go to see a famous artwork, and end up meeting someone special. We may go to get out of the rain and come face to face with an artefact that changes the way we think, or lifts us somehow; something that sets us on a wholly new journey of discovery. Make it a real experience.

 

 

Sonia Margareto,

Head of Pastoral Care

For Queen Elizabeth II to appear alongside Angelina Jolie is not a common occurrence (although, as the photograph shows, it is not unprecedented) but their names were linked in an interesting way on Tuesday as we, alongside thousands of other schools and organisations, took time out of our busy schedules to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD)

 

So, what do the Queen and Angelina have in common?  Read on to discover more.

 

IWD, as it has become known, is now a global phenomenon with its own website, partnerships with a number of corporations (from Accenture to Western Union) and even a link with the World Association of Girl Guiding.

 

We may wonder why it is important to have an IWD – after all, we don’t have an equivalent for men!  (Actually, we do.  International Men’s Day falls on 19 November and is recognised in 70 countries worldwide but, inaugurated as recently as 1992, it has gained nothing like the traction of IWD worldwide.)

 

Reports, such as that by the World Economic Forum – published, ironically enough, on International Men’s Day 2015 – may go some way to explaining why IWD is growing in prominence with each passing year.  The Report concluded that, since women globally currently earn on average about 54% of the wage of their male counterparts for similar work, at the present rate of change, it may well take until the year 2133 to close the gender pay gap.   Even in the UK, ranked 18^th in the world for pay parity, the gap currently stands at about 14%.  Put another way, this means that women in the UK in effect work for free in comparison with their male co-workers from 9 November each year.  IWD may be said, therefore, to be dedicated to ensuring its own eventual demise as unnecessary, which may rescue it from the charges of tokenism levelled at it by some feminist critics.

 

The event, in fact, has a long history; the first recorded Women’s Day, organised by American socialists to commemorate a strike by the Ladies Garment Workers’ Union in New York, took place as long ago as February 1909.  The date of 8 March was first chosen in 1914 after British Suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square on that day.  From the very beginning, then, IWD was associated with the struggle for economic and political equality.  In 1917, for example, women in St Petersburg, holding an IWD demonstration, played a crucial part in the world-changing events of the Russian Revolution.

 

A second dimension, however, to IWD is its aim to ‘celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women around the world’ in a bid to address the relative lack of visibility of women in many areas of life – for example, in boardrooms and at the Bar, in professorial chairs and at operating tables.  Relative lack of visibility, I say, because there are millions of women today who are doing tremendous work and acting as inspiring role models to their contemporaries.  One such is Louise Pentland, a blogger/author and Northampton High School alumna, who came to add ‘a sprinkle of glitter’ to our Book Week in February. Louise has recently been chosen by the United Nations as one of their Change Ambassadors with a remit to campaign for gender parity, adding her distinctive voice to the thousands who are using social media for gender barriers to be torn down.

 

This is why, at Northampton High, we chose to celebrate IWD 2016 as INSPIRATIONAL Women’s Day, by asking the question ‘Who is the most inspiring woman of our times?’  In Senior School, our special Assembly opened with Rebecca Thomas and Natasha Wilcockson performing their own arrangement of Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ for cello duet.

 

To launch our search for the Inspirational Woman of 2016 we heard four students, Rosie Saxton, Elisa Hemeng, Priya Lakkappa and

Victoria Eden speak, with eloquence and conviction, in favour of their nominees – 7/7 attack survivor Gill Hicks,  German Chancellor Angela Merkel, educational activist Malala Yousafzai and actor and humanitarian campaigner Angelina Jolie respectively.  Meanwhile, in Junior School, the Year 6 girls collaborated to compile a list of women who inspired them, coming up with a dozen names from many walks of life – sport and the silver screen, politics and philanthropy – and different generations (Meryl Streep alongside Jessica Ennis-Hill, for example).

 

Then came the Big Vote – the excitement of polling and waiting for the final result.  Which brings me back to Queen Elizabeth II and Angelina Jolie, who shared the honours as Junior and Senior School winners respectively.  And which only goes to show, reassuringly, that there is no identikit role model for Northampton High girls and that inspiration comes in many forms.  Isobel Carman used the IWD video booth, set up by Ms Heimfeld during the week, to pay a moving tribute to her courageous mum and the Reception girls nominated Mrs McCue, our own Catering Manager, following what was clearly an inspiring tour of the school kitchen with her. Finally, I should add my own roll call of inspiring women –  my colleagues Mrs Drew, Mrs Fordham, Miss Fraser, Ms Heimfeld, Miss Hurst, Mrs Li-Lakkappa and Mrs Wrightson, who did a great deal to make the day special.

Dr Helen Stringer, Headmistress

 

Sources

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34842471

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/18/women-will-get-equal-pay-in-118-years-wef-gender-parity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day

http://www.tubefilter.com/2016/03/02/youtube-partnership-with-united-nations-global-production-initiative-female-empowerment/

Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living” and here at Northampton High School this is one of our fundamental aims to ensure that our students develop their thinking skills as thinking is life.

 

The P4C or “community of enquiry approach” has been shown to develop this still further as it is very adaptable; which is why it is used in adult groups as well as schools, and for recreational as well as educational purposes.

The approach has been implemented here at school as the aim behind it is to develop resourcefulness in the use of language by putting enquiry into the heart of the educational process, teachers begin to ask more open and genuine questions, whilst students become more confident in expressing their puzzlements and in developing their interests.

But developing a community of enquiry requires more than just concentrating on better questioning. It is equally important to develop reasoning and reflection, both in public and private. And these bring into play, among other things, emotions and the thoughtful expression of emotions.

In essence the process is multifaceted and profoundly personal. It presents an intellectual challenge to our girls, but also a social and emotional one. It encourages open-mindedness, and creates conditions for change.

Philosophy for Children promotes a forum for open dialogue in which participants are not content to exchange ideas and opinions as if they were bits of information. This term the U4th have been involved in looking at development in Sub-Saharan Africa, they have asked questions, sifted arguments and explored alternatives. Above all, they try to understand each other and the role disease is playing in the development of this area.

 

Mrs Langhorn, Senior Teacher

Whilst contemplating this blog I have started to think about the place of sport in our lives. We all know the physical benefits of sport and are often subject to healthy lifestyle campaigns about regular exercise, informing us that all adults should take part in 30 minutes of pulse raising activity daily and high intensity exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes 5 times a week. Those of us doing this are less likely to suffer coronary heart disease or osteoporosis and so on. Yet in today’s society 80% of women are not taking part in the recommended levels of sport to stay healthy. Is sport considered to be a risk too far in modern day society?

I started to think about the idea of risk taking and sport as a vehicle for this. Look at Beth Tweddle one of Great Britain’s most celebrated Olympic gymnasts who made the decision to participate in the reality television show ‘The Jump’. During the show she suffered a serious injury resulting in back surgery having fractured one of her vertebrae. She is making inroads on her road to recovery, but this begs the question, was this area of sport and this challenge one step too far? In this instance we are looking at extreme sports, and we know that sports people are on the whole ‘adrenaline junkies’;  when they have finished competing at a high level will they always be seeking the next challenge? But is this why they are so successful? Do they assess the risk and decide that it is manageable? When anyone steps into the field of competitive sport there is a huge risk and the possibility that, despite all the hard work and training, you will play your best of your ability and still not be successful. Is this a life lesson that we all need to learn? It makes me think of the quote by the world’s most famous basketball player Michael Jordan;

‘I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’

Perhaps this is what sport teaches us. It is okay to take a risk and to fail, or to rephrase this, in order to win you have to be prepared to lose. Consider the thought that obstacles don’t have to stop you, if you encounter a wall think about how to climb it, go through it or walk around it. Is it this attitude and way of thinking that bring us to the following findings; that female executives say participation in sport helps accelerate leadership and career potential and that 74% of employers say that a background in sport will assist in the professional careers of women? A more recent study showed that 96% of the highest ranking female executives played sports and 55% of them at university level or higher. There is even a direct link between playing sports in high school and earning a bigger salary as an adult. In addition to this, recent research has shown that for every 15 minutes of regular exercise that young people take part in, their academic performance increases by a quarter of a grade. It was even possible that children who carried out 60 minutes of exercise every day could improve their academic performance by a full grade.

So why do we take part in sport. is it to do better in exams? Is it for the ‘love of the game?’ Is it because our parents did? All of these reasons could be yes, but in the whole world of sport and life remember the following;

“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.” –Vince Lombardi

“The glory of sport comes from dedication, determination and desire. Achieving success and personal glory in athletics has less to do with wins and losses than it does with learning how to prepare yourself so that at the end of the day, whether on the track or in the office, you know that there was nothing more you could have done to reach your ultimate goal.” – Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Mrs Jo Hackett, Director of Sport

It has been fascinating to read the BBC’s list of Inspiring Women for 2015 which was published before Christmas. The list features 100 amazing women from across the world who have made a real difference in a whole range of ways. The BBC chose to focus the list on octogenarians sharing life lessons, film makers discussing expectations and pressure in their field, nursing, five high-profile women and ’30 under 30 entrepreneurs’.

This March we will be celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) and in school  we will be focusing on the ‘women who inspire us’.  IWD has been observed since the 1900’s, over a century ago, going from strength to strength over that time. We welcomed more than 100 girls to our year 7 Entrance Exam last Friday which despite the assessments in the morning saw girls by the end of the day leave us happy and smiling having made new friends and enjoyed a fun afternoon working together to create the tallest tower, using just a few items such as straws, a paper plate, a sheet of A3 paper and a roll of stickytape; quite a challenge! These girls are in a world very different from when the first International Women’s Day took place but I had no doubt looking round the room that they will become some of our inspiring women of the future. Many of the girls in 6-2 have already received offers from their university choices and the huge range of courses and locations reflect the diverse passions and talents of the girls as they go off to make their mark on the world.

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is ‘Pledging for Parity!’ so I have chosen five British women from the BBC’s Inspiring Women list to share with you who have made a difference in accelerating gender parity in their field.

Writer, broadcaster and columnist, Clare Fox is the Director of the Institute of Ideas. Clare set this up in order to challenge “established orthodoxies” and the Institute organises public debates on controversial topics.  Clare took part in the BBC ‘Is media failing women?’ debate.

Alice Gray, graduated from Cardiff University with a BSc in Neuroscience in 2013 and has been blogging ever since. Her blog, mind-ful.blogspot.co.uk, discusses issues which women face in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects. She aims to improve the number of women in the industry .

Dame Tina Lavender, is one of the world’s top experts in midwifery, specialising in the management of prolonged labour and the use of the partograph – a tool designed to help midwives monitor births. She acts as an advisor to the World Health Organisation and developed a board game designed to increase the use of the tool in Africa.

Jessy McCabe, Jessy is in her final year of school and is currently studying for her A Levels in music, maths and history. After realising she was not studying even one female composer as part of her music A Level, she successfully petitioned the largest exam board in the UK to change the syllabus.

Baroness Patricia Scotland is currently Britain’s trade envoy to South Africa, a barrister and was former UK attorney general. She was appointed Britain’s first black female Queen’s Counsel in 1991 and is the founder of the Corporate Alliance Against Domestic Violence.

Last but by no means least, Sophie Walker  is the leader of the Women’s Equality Party, a new collaborative force in British politics, which believes women should enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men. She worked as an international news agency journalist for nearly 20 years and is also an ambassador for the National Autistic Society, campaigning for better support and understanding of autism, particularly in women and girls.

I leave you with a quote from the International Women’s Day website from world-renowned feminist, journalist and social and political activist Gloria Steinem “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.”

Mrs Jo Fitzroy-Ezzy, Development Director