Independent Schools and Team GB

39% of the medals won by Team GB at London2012 were won by pupils who were educated in UK independent schools, despite only the sector accounting for only 7% of the total school population ('Olympics 2012: third of Team GB medallists came from private schools' Guardian 14/08/2012) It's surely worth exploring why these schools are so successful in fostering success. Coming to the school I am at from the state system, I believe that it comes down to valuing sport as an integral part of the curriculum. Not only that but investing in it too: 1.Time. Pupils in Independent Schools do so, so much more games and PE than in the state sector. 2.Facilities. Schools like the one I'm at invest millions in providing state-of-the-art facilities: sports hall, swimming pool, games pitches, weights rooms, squash, fives and tennis courts etc etc.Plymouth College (Tom Daley's school) is an interesting case in point here. 3.Coaching. Perhaps most significantly of all, Independent Schools invest in quality sports coaching. I would love to see much more of these aspects in the state sector.

A couple of early reviews...

http://endofradio.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/of-mice-and-menmerchiston-st-georges-the-space-on-niddry-st-20-22-august/ http://www.broadwaybaby.com/listing.php?id=16483

Feeling proud...

One of the sad things about the Fringe is the quick turn around at the venue (just 5 minutes) which does not allow any time whatsoever to soak up the applause and see the students’ faces after such a myriad of achievement. Anyway, I feel enormous affection and respect for everyone—individually and collectively—for what they have given, the way they entertained and attained. A brilliant opening night. Reviews to follow...

The opening night is nearly here...

I had forgotten that feeling just before the curtain opens on the first night; knowing everything about the cast and them knowing everything about me, stripped of the term-time/classroom style and act.

Flyering at the festival

4 days to go...

At the Edinburgh Festival…2

We’re currently back in rehearsals ahead of hitting the Fringe next week: rehearsing each line, each speech, every movement, changing the pace, working on memory, on voice, on how to move and stand, how to use the new stage, use of eyes, control of hands and feet, keeping heads up, being courageous, clear, subtle, patient, to touch, react, act naturally, take criticism, above all have fun…we’re doing it again and again and again…we need to earn our audience and then our audience’s applause (hopefully!). We’re getting there…

The cruel paradox

At certain points this year, I have gone under: driving myself away, not just from my students, but from friends and family too. I worked harder and harder and, with the best will in the world, the job became everything to me. At points I have even felt resentful and undervalued, ever more conscious of my position and status, more po-faced, more tired, more proud of my service, more running, more proud of my self-sacrifice, more running and, of course, more tired, more marking, more photocopying, more late nights, more time that has elapsed since I last spoke to my friends and family on the phone, more early mornings, more running… However, I am not a better friend, son, fiancé, teacher for all of this, I am unquestionably worse. I know that nobody wants to be mates with me when I have ‘gone under’. As I runner where balance is crucial, I am therefore making a pledge (on the world wide web!) to be more balanced. No longer will I devote my entire life in term time to the school and then recover my sanity, friends and health in the holidays (as I seem to be doing right now)…I see too little of that Real World that my parents talked to me about around the kitchen table as I grew up. I can all too easily go for two weeks without leaving the school grounds, I see too little of Auld Reekie (it may as well be Kabul). True, friends have kindly visited and we have taken them to a restaurant, Murrayfield, a nightclub, but I was seldom absorbed or fully enjoying myself. Being 100% for school does not make for good teaching either. Sometimes I would find my alarm going off at 5am (at the sleep-deprived time I almost feel like this is the central plank of my achievement) and out running in the Pentland hills, in the dark, the pouring rain, with a head torch on, mulling over my lessons and to-do list for the day… My running and obsessions in general are attempts to bring order to an unruly mind. Without an outlet I tended towards reticence, and my reticence can manifest itself as gloominess. Sophie respects this, I think—even appreciates it, in theory, but she struggles, understandably, with the specifics. I run because I need to run, blitzing through mile after mile. Of course, I want to be impressive, a credit to the school, a credit to the profession, I want my school to be immensely proud of me, but sometimes it might be better to run the risk of seeming a little uncommitted or a touch semi-detached, I will try not to selflessly take on everything; but I am sometimes so scared of failure that I daren’t even contemplate it. Before half term in the summer term I was nearly half-spent, over half term I marked 289 scripts for an exam board, I returned exhausted and by the last few weeks of term I was a self-pitying wreck. I am determined not to sell my students, friends, family short in this way. Real discipline, I am beginning to think, is not necessarily driving oneself on; rather, it is pacing oneself (I should know this as a long-distance runner!). At times this year I have been in a puritanically self-obsessed rut, I have found it hard to relax and even wondered whether I should. I did not speak to my friends in London for two months and I did not even notice, until, one day, a rather churlish email came through telling me to sort myself out. The truth is, at the time, (and I have probably only admitted this to Sophie) is that I’m only truly happy when working; reflection brings dangerous thoughts, so, back to burning the candle at both ends. Occasionally I’ll apologise in a postcard to my mates and tell them how much they do really mean to me and justify it to myself by telling myself that I’m only ‘trying’ to do a good job. So, this is me vowing to do better next time. I’ll end with two lines from W. H. Davies who captures everything I have just discussed in his famous aphorism, made even more famous by its use in a Centre Parcs advert. Of course, Davies had an advantage over me; he wasn’t a teacher but a homeless guy: What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

Next term’s play

Together with the producer, I have made a decision on the text for next term’s play—this wasn’t straightforward either! Do we have the right actors, will the school like it, is it too easy/tricky, verse or prose, demanding enough, big cast or small, classical or modern, English or foreign, a musical, what did we do 3/4/5 years ago?? So, ‘The Real Inspector Hound’ it is…right, let’s go for it…

Producing and directing

Without doubt, this is one of the most challenging, all-consuming but fulfilling experiences I have had whilst teaching. The time, effort and discipline needed from every member of the team is so intense that my Headmaster often says that it is like running a boarding House for a term. Hats off then to those Housemasters I know that also direct school plays! It often seems that the producer has just as hard a time as the director too because drama does not always have the same status as other activities in schools. The rehearsal schedule, for example, is such a headache: booking rooms, spaces, designing the set, costumes, tickets, programmes and then the clashes and conflicting loyalties. Can we risk the rehearsals going awry because the lead actor also runs the CCF? What about sport? Do we want the lead to end up with a broken leg and black eye from rugby? Is the rugby an acceptable risk? Is it fair on the rest of the cast? If he commits to the play does will that affect whether or not he is picked for the 1st XV? That’s not fair either. Such professional disputes are just part of the course. Feeling concern for everyone’s sensitivity but tough enough to take control of the whole group and make it happen, without, of course, losing their goodwill and the sense of creative fun which is what it’s all about.

stag dos 2

Having been in touch with the Groom’s list of stags, I have received an eclectic range of responses: first, (and this is perhaps owing to the recent films Bridesmaids and The Hangover I and II) expectations that a trip to Las Vegas is de rigueur; second, pleas to avoid any “extravastaganzas” and keep cost to an absolute minimum; third, a request for more of a creative stag and an insistence that learning a “skill” (such as cooking) is a bonding experience. Of course, I intend to be the best best man I can be and I’ll do whatever the Groom prefers; however, when it comes to mine, I’m determined to buck against the high-stakes stag. Outlandish? Possibly a spot of cannoning and zorbing. Ironic? Perhaps a pub crawl in Dalston; night out in Glasgow. Low-key, affordable and just a ‘larf’…imagine that?! Anyway, back to the 800-long email chains…

Stag dos

When asked by a parent how I would be spending my summer holidays, I told them that one of my jobs was to arrange a friend’s stag-do as part of my best man duties. “Willy straws, L-plates, very dodgy Chippendales from East Kilbride and a drunken minibus ride home is what I can remember from mine” she told me, “but last year I had the best week of my life. We spent a year planning it’ she continued. “We flew into a castle in the Balearics by helicopter, had Michelin-starred caterers and a fireworks display after supper.” To say I was taken aback would be an understatement, on a number of counts. “It’s the kind of upscale romance that girls dream of for their honeymoon, not a hen do,” my fiancée (thankfully?) reassured me. But the more I explore the options, the more I am coming to realise that stag dos are, like weddings, a distasteful concoction of social standing, taste and popularity! Surely the stag is supposed to be much more inexpensive and insignificant compared to the “I do”?!