As the thirteenth Head of Wimbledon High School, having taken up post in September 2020 during the most extraordinary of times, what have I learnt during my first year?
Well, and this came as no surprise, as I had been Deputy Head for five years previously and was familiar with the special place that is this corner of SW19, I’ve learnt that the heart of a good school, its thriving community and shared culture and values, will keep beating, whatever the circumstances of lockdowns and enforced separation. At Wimbledon High, our amazing students instinctively understand and feel what being part of this school means: to be curious about ideas, to be courageous and able to take risks intellectually, to be eager to seek out new experiences which nourish us and help us to build resilience, to be understanding of our own worth, and our corresponding ability and indeed duty to make a difference to others, and to be passionate about pursuing our talents, living life to the full and enjoying ourselves whenever possible.
I also learnt that as teachers and learners, we could adapt and innovate further than even we thought was possible – and we were already a school that embraced technology and harnessed its incredible powers to enhance education, borne out by our winning the TES award for Best use of Technology in Education in 2020 and being shortlisted again this year. We ensure that technology is always a brilliant addition to the richness of intellectual pursuit – and never a replacement. Our innovative emphasis on STEAM offers different ways of teaching and engagement: the bringing together of Science, Technology, Engineering, ARTS and Maths encourages connections between perhaps hitherto unconnected ideas and also encourages students to become the flexible, collaborative and agile solvers of problems which our world requires now more than ever.
And the third major lesson learnt was that we all respond differently to a crisis, so we must take care to support each other, in particular those who are neurodiverse. Our pastoral care has always been sector-leading and throughout Covid, we have continued to put the well-being of each and every student at the heart of all that we do, through our tutoring and pastoral teams and also through our holistic GROW programme. We are an academic school and because of that, not despite it, we expect to welcome a wide range of learners with varying and neurodiverse needs.
This article was previously published in Education Choices.