Does Drama have a place in the A in Steam?

Emily, Year 10, asks if enough emphasis is placed on drama as part of the A (Arts) within STEAM.

What is STEM/STEAM?

STEM was originally a government initiative to “help empower future generations through science, technology, engineering and maths to grow a dynamic, innovative economy”. Recently the A was added to STEM to include the arts, but how much emphasis, if any, is put on drama as part of this addition? Traditionally within education drama has been seen as a soft option. It was often viewed as a GCSE choice for students who are less academically capable, and few links are made between the benefits of drama and other areas of the STEM curriculum.

Why do people consider Drama as a lesser part of the A in STEAM?

When considering the A in STEAM, many people think of subjects such as art, design or and/or the humanities, with the performing arts (which includes drama) very much a secondary consideration.

Commonly drama is mistaken for a break from academia. Drama, music and dance are often under threat amongst underfunded schools subject to ever-increasing budgetary constraints. Even important figures within the performing arts world cannot be relied upon to promote drama within education. The head of the National Youth Theatre said in 2014 that “drama classes should be taken off the GCSE curriculum because they are irrelevant, and the subject is seen as soft and easy”.

Above: Jungle Book by Year 8 earlier this year

How does drama help with STEAM learning in schools and in STEAM careers?

Learning drama at school, or participating in the performing arts, is beneficial and important in many different areas. The skills you develop through drama can help in all areas of your subjects including the traditional STEM subjects. Positive outcomes include:

Problem-solving – drama improves problem-solving and decision making, for example improvisation can help with quick thinking solutions. Developing problem-solving skills is a key reason why the STEM initiative started in the first place – to solve many of the world’s problems.

Imagination – In drama you need imagination; you have to make creative choices and think of new ideas. Imagination increases creativity and innovation; this is essential in, for example, engineering to design new products and processes to drive efficiency. Einstein himself said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Team working skills – this is an essential skill in life which crosses all disciplines at school and in life. The ability to work well in a team, to be able to listen and incorporate other people’s ideas is as important in STEM careers as it is in any other. In drama lessons, or when putting on a school production, working well as a team is essential to the success of the project, whether you are front of stage or backstage, no project or performance succeeds unless every part of the team pulls together.

Empathy – drama teaches you the skill of empathy and develops your emotional intelligence. You have to understand a character’s motivation and actions by putting yourself in their shoes. EQ is becoming an increasingly important skill in the workplace.

Confidence in speaking – drama lessons often translate into better communication skills and self-confidence. Drama students are encouraged to ask questions and explain their thoughts, and of course to perform in front of a live audience. The ability to be able to speak effectively in public and present your ideas confidently is a key leadership skill that will help with an individual’s career progression.

WHS Play — Above: ‘Education, Education, Education’ – the WHS Senior Play this term

How else can drama help?

In 2012 the National Endowment for the Arts released a report showing that low-income student’s who had access to the arts tended to have better academic results, when music, dance and drama are part of people’s life they generally then go on to have better work opportunities. You also cannot underestimate the importance of a balanced education, and drama can act as an important emotional release from the demands of academia and the pressures of modern life.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe that drama does deserve a place in the A in STEAM. Many skills that drama help you develop are vital to those needed for success in STEAM careers and in everyday life.

References

https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/11/18/ctq-jolly-stem-vs-steam.html

http://www.childdrama.com/why.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/take-drama-off-gcse-curriculum-insists-national-youth-theatre-boss-9831791.html

https://leftbraincraftbrain.com/what-is-steam-and-why-is-steam-important

https://www.shoutoutuk.org/

https://www.teachercast.net/

27th November 20197th June 2022

Why do babies in medieval art look like mini adults?

Helena, Year 10, looks at the different influences on medieval and Renaissance art, and how this changed the portrayal of children and babies in art.

Last summer, I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which is full of amazing Italian art from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Whilst there, I found it amusing that all of the babies in earlier artwork look less like babies and more like old men, such as in Madonna and Child by Bonaventura Berlinghieri, painted between about 1260 and 1270. Or in Paolo Veneziano’s Madonna With Child, painted in 1333. At first, I thought perhaps these artists had just never actually seen a baby, or couldn’t paint them, however, these odd-looking babies were actually very intentional.

Most medieval babies were depictions of Jesus

In the medieval period, most portraits of children and babies were commissioned by the church, which greatly limited the range of subjects to Jesus and a few other babies in the Bible. At the time, portrayals of Jesus were heavily influenced by homunculus, which translates from Latin to mean ‘little man’. They believed that Jesus was born perfect and unchanged, which was reflected in the artwork of the period, as he often is painted with similar features as a wise old man. Over time, this homuncular, adult-looking Jesus became the norm, and artists depicted all babies in the same way.

Medieval artists were less interested in realism

This unrealistic way of painting baby Jesus actually reflected a much wider trend in medieval art; unlike the Renaissance artists, they were far less interested in naturalism, and tended to lean more towards expressionistic conventions. This can be seen in both of the paintings above, as like Jesus, Madonna also does not look very realistic.

How the Renaissance changed medieval conventions

Non-religious art flourished

During the Renaissance, Florence’s middle-class prospered, and art was used for more purposes than the decoration of churches. Unlike in the medieval period, where common or even middle-class people are rarely portrayed in art, during the Renaissance more people could afford to commission art and portraits. Therefore, as portraiture expanded, and people did not want their own children and babies to look like homunculi; realistic, cuter babies became more standard. Eventually, even Jesus began to be depicted as the more cherub-like baby we would recognise today.

Renaissance idealism changed

During the Renaissance period, artists became more interested in naturalistic and realistic painting styles, unlike the more expressionistic style used by the earlier Medieval artists. There was a new interest in observing from the natural world and this extended to include babies and children as well as adults.

Children were viewed as innocents

In this period, a transformation in the way children were viewed was underway. Instead of tiny adults, babies were thought to be born without sin or knowledge and were therefore innocent. This changing of adult attitudes was reflected in artwork, as babies began to look much cuter, younger and more realistic than before.

It’s probably a good thing that post-Renaissance attitudes to children have prevailed, as I think we can all agree homunculi babies are not the prettiest!

20th November 20197th June 2022

Can you smell blue? The changing beliefs of synaesthesia and ideasthesia

Talia, Year 8, explores the concept of ideasthesia and how our understanding of it has changed over time.

To understand what ideasthesia is, first we must look to its cousin, synaesthesia. The word synaesthesia literally translates as ‘union of senses’ and comes from the Greek words ‘syn’ which means ‘union’ and ‘aesthesis’ which means ‘senses’. It is a phenomenon in which some people associate external stimuli to a sense. For example, people with letter-colour synaesthesia can see individual letters as different colours. Other types of synaesthesia include musical sounds-colours, pain-colours, vision-tastes and many more.

The original understanding of synaesthesia was taken almost directly from the translation of the word. Scientists thought the sensory parts of synesthetes’ (people who suffer from synaesthesia) brain were somehow connected and, when given certain stimuli, would trigger each other. Later studies made on synesthetes suggested that this theory was not entirely correct; in one study, synesthetes made new synesthetic associations to letters they had never seen before. These associations were made within seconds which is not enough time to form a new physical connection between the colour representation and letter representation areas in the brain so this proved that the senses could not be linked.

In another study, letter-colour synesthetes were shown what could be a ‘zero’ or an ‘o’. When the shape was shown in the context of letters, the synesthetes interpreted the shape as the letter ‘o’ and viewed it as one colour; when the shape was shown in the context of numbers, the synesthetes interpreted the shape as the number ‘zero’ and viewed it as a different colour even though it was the exact same shape as before. This study shows that the inducer of these experiences is semantic rather than purely sensory.

Croatian cognitive neuroscientist, Danko Nikolic, came up with the name ‘ideasthesia’ for this new theory coming from the Greek word’s ‘idea’ meaning ‘idea’ or ‘concept’, and ‘aesthesis’ meaning ‘senses’ – it translates to ‘sensing ideas’. During Nikolic’s research, a woman came to him with a very rare case of synaesthesia called mirror-speech synaesthesia. She said “I hear any sound made by a human and it feels like I’m making that sound… in stomach, body, throat and mouth…but only in my mind. I don’t get throat pain for ‘singing’ too much.” Nikolic ran some tests on this woman to dig deeper into her curious case. He discovered that, when the woman was told that an animal was making a noise, she wouldn’t get the sensations. However, if she played the exact same noise again and was told that a human made it, she would get the sensations.

The woman in Nikolic’s study appears to be a rare case but there is a bit of ideasthesia in everyone. When asked to name one shape ‘Bouba’ and one shape ‘Kiki’, most subjects chose to name shape A ‘Kiki’ and shape B ‘Bouba’ based on the shape that the mouth makes as it is forming these words and how the words sound – this shows that we all have a basis of ideasthesia in all of us – we link concepts to sensory stimuli whether it’s shapes, colours or others. Furthermore, the subjects went on to describe ‘Kiki’ as nervous and clever, whereas ‘Bouba’ was described as lazy and slow.

Perhaps this theory of ideasthesia could help with the long-lasting mind-body conundrum: is the mind a separate entity that controls our body externally? Or, if it is part of the brain, how does it translate the input of physical senses into the non-physical state of thoughts? Some scientists are now saying that our mistake is assuming that there is a barrier between these two functions – that thoughts and senses are linked together in a complex network, comparable to our language network.

The traditional view is that the senses grasp a collection of vibrations or colours which our brain translates into the sound of a voice or the colours of a flower. Ideasthesia suggests that these processes happen as one – our sensory perceptions are based on our conceptual understanding that we hold of the world. This is what helps us understand metaphors that make no logical sense, such as the comparison of a cushion to air based on the shared sensation of fluffiness, and the apparent weightlessness of them both.

11th November 2019

To infinity and beyond! Understanding more about the concept of infinity

Elena, Year 13, explores the concept of infinity, challenging our understanding.

Most people nowadays are comfortable with the idea that numbers can go on forever. Theoretically, you could keep counting on and on.

If I asked: Which is bigger? The set of all counting numbers, or the set of all even numbers?

The natural inclination would be to say that the set of all numbers is larger than the set of even numbers. However, these two sets of infinities are actually equal.

Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox

In the 1920s, the German mathematician David Hilbert devised a famous thought experiment to show us just how hard it is to wrap our minds around the concept of infinity.

Imagine a grand hotel with an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests in those rooms.

To challenge the common idea about infinity, he asked what would happen if a new guest came along and asked to stay in a room. At first, it seems impossible, as there is already an infinite number of guests.

However, the trick is to ask each guest to move along one room:

The guest in room 1 moves to room 2, the one in room 2 moves to room 3 and so on. Since there is an infinite number of rooms, there will still be room for all the previous guests.

So the new guest would have a space in room number 1. This shows that infinity+1 is still equal to infinity.

This solution is only possible because the infinite hotel only deals with the lowest levels of infinity, mainly the countable infinity of the natural numbers.

Cardinality

If we were dealing with higher orders of infinity, such as the real numbers, these strategies would not be possible as there is no way of systematically including every number.

The infinite hotel on the real number line would have an infinite number of rooms in the basement (negative numbers), fractional rooms, square root rooms and other irrational number rooms.

Even though this example shows how adding infinities equals another infinity, some infinities are known to be bigger than others.

This concept was first introduced in 1891 by a German mathematician called Georg Cantor, who tackled the idea of the existence of transfinite numbers and their cardinality.

Transfinite numbers are numbers which are used to describe the size of an infinite set of numbers, while cardinality is the size of a set.

Having the same cardinality means that there is a one-to-one correspondence between sets of numbers – this is called a bijection. This means that each number from one set can be matched up with a number in another set.

Conclusion

In summary, when adding infinities together, you get another infinity. However, this new infinity will have the same cardinality as the previous one. This is because it will be possible to make a bijection with the original infinities.

On the other hand, there are infinities which are so large, that their cardinality (known as 𝖈) is still considered to be a hypothesis, and anything between the smallest cardinality and the largest one is still a mystery to be proved.

This shows how hard it is for our finite minds to imagine a concept as large as infinity.

Bibliography

Alfeld, Peter. (1996). Why are there infinitely many prime numbers?. Available: https://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/q2.html .

Crowston, Robert. (2011). Hilbert’s Hotel. Available: https://nrich.maths.org/5788 .

Jaksich, John. (2013). Infinity is Weird. Available: https://skullsinthestars.com/2013/11/14/infinity-is-weird-how-big-is-infinity/ .

Marianne. (2013). Maths in a Minute: Countable Infinities. Available: https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-countable-infinities .

Mcgregor, Peter. (2008). A glimpse of Cantor’s Paradise. Available: https://plus.maths.org/content/glimpse-cantors-paradise .

5th November 2019

Did the Great Depression influence the response to the 2008 Financial Crisis?

Lauren, Year 13, discusses whether the Great Depression influenced the response to the 2008 Financial Crisis.

During the Great Depression, wages were cut for workers which led to a reduction in demand. This stemmed in the bankruptcy of thousands, as the stock market went into free fall after the Wall Street Crash. Between 1929 and 1932 more than 100,000 businesses went bankrupt, and around 11,000 banks stopped trading. When these banks shut down, savers lost all of their money so they could no longer buy consumer goods. This reduction in demand resulted in the redundancy of many workers, ultimately creating a further decline in the level of aggregate demand. Thus, the economy entered a downward spiral.

President Hoover interpreted the Depression as hypothetical notion, a normal business turndown, rather than a solidified and evidenced occurrence. Consequently, when an attempt to take action was made it was a little too late. Following the Great Depression, regulations were altered, and economic policies restructured all across the world. The economic system was redesigned to avoid a repeat of this disaster and the levels of government spending were increased.

After the Great Depression, it was often assumed that there would not be another economic downturn of such major proportions as it was believed that the lessons that had been learned then could be applied to any future crisis, protecting the future from such economic turmoil. However, perhaps the lessons learned were not enough to ultimately fend off the Financial Crisis of 2008 in which there had been a rise of non-bank institutions which were not regulated to the same extent as commercial banks, concerning loans.

Several measures were put into place in order to alleviate the effects of the crisis. In the USA, loans from the Federal Reserve were enforced, and the US even tried a Keynesian fiscal stimulus in early 2008 to ‘jump-start’ the economy, but this wasn’t successful enough because the stimulus was too small, at only about 1% of GDP.

A matter of interest to many economists is how the crisis was dealt with in the UK under the Labour government, because they continued to spend significantly in the immediate aftermath of the Financial Crisis. This helped to ease the initial impact because it reduced the economic downturn, but the rate at which the national debt was shooting up was dangerous.

The coalition government slashed public spending after 2010, damaging public services and holding back economic recovery after the crisis. Although it would have been wrong to ignore the huge government deficit inherited from Labour, it could be suggested that Osborne should not have cut spending on infrastructure and capital to such a degree, allowing the UK to invest to boost productivity.

In conclusion, had the enormous intervention by governments not happened, the impact of the Financial Crisis would have been significantly greater. This means that it can be argued that the Great Depression did, to some extent, influence the response to the 2008 Financial Crisis as it persuaded governments to intervene quickly and at great expense in order to avoid a repeat of events in the 1930s. However, it can be argued that these policies were not as successful as envisaged due to the complexity of new financial instruments.

17th October 2019

Why should WHS connect more with the community?

Janvi, (Year 13) explains what her role as Charities and Partnerships Rep involves and explores her plans for the year. In our busy daily lives, why is it important to make connections to the wider world?

What does the role of Charities and Partnerships Rep involve?

I think it is reasonable to say that the average WHS girl leads a fairly busy life. With countless deadlines and extra-curricular commitments, sometimes it seems impossible to find time for yourself, let alone for others! As Charities and Partnerships Rep, one of my main duties is to remind students of the importance of giving time to charity and helping those in need. I truly believe the core characteristics lying at the heart of every WHS girl are empathy and kindness, and my aim is to motivate pupils throughout the school to use these values to help make a significant impact on the lives of people around us.

Another important aspect of my role is organising and running various charity events such as the Autumn Charity Fair which took place last week. It was heart-warming to see students of all ages working together to raise money for various causes, led by our newly elected year-group charity reps.

Aims for the year

My aims for this academic year fall under three categories:

Raising awareness

Bringing awareness to the work which a charity does is very important as it encourages more people to get involved and fundraise as well as bringing to light different issues faced by people across the world. For this reason, I plan to start a termly newsletter detailing the work done by our chosen year-group charities and the charity events that have been taking place.

Giving time and getting involved

As I have mentioned, giving time to charity is often neglected due to our busy lives, so with the help of our year-group charity reps, I would like to encourage people to take time out of their week to help others.

Increasing our fundraising output

Fundraising is crucial as charities need money to provide the people they help with specific resources and services. Therefore, the goal for each year group this year is to raise £300 per term towards their chosen charity.

Why is making connections to the wider world so important?

Our pastoral theme for this year is “Connections”, which is an idea that links very closely to charity and partnerships. When it comes to charity work, there is often a heavy focus on fundraising. Whilst giving money to charity is undoubtedly important, the power of connecting with individuals on a personal level is astounding and often underestimated. Every week during our Enrichment session at Kew House Care Home, I find myself astonished at the impact our visit has on the elderly residents. Seeing their faces light up as we chat to them and play games with them is a powerful reminder of the difference that can be made to a person’s life by simply giving your time and energy without expecting anything in return. To us, it is simply an hour out of our day every week, whilst to them we are making a significant improvement to their day.

Spending time with people in our community and making connections with them is also incredibly rewarding. Not only does it bring happiness and a sense of fulfilment and purpose, but it constantly challenges us to see the world from somebody else’s perspective and reminds us to be grateful for what we have. In our day-to-day life it is very easy to forget how lucky we are and the privilege we hold, but charity work enables us to put our problems into perspective which is crucial to living a fulfilling life.

For these reasons, my main goal this year is to encourage students to make connections, whether it be locally or globally, because giving a tiny fraction of your time to support a person who is in desperate need of help can truly make a significant improvement to their life.

8th October 2019

WHS and the environment: where next?

Flora (Year 13), Environment Rep, expands on the responsibilities she has at WHS, and what we as a school community are trying to do in the fight against climate change.

The role of Environment Rep

Now, more than ever, the climate emergency has been brought to our attention, mainly thanks to the incredible Greta Thunberg. The 16-year-old activist has brought on climate strikes all over the world, and recently talked at the UN Environmental Summit, speaking passionately and emotionally about the lack of action regarding climate change. When hearing her speak in this way it is always a wakeup call which helps us to evaluate what we can do to help the environment.

Above: Greta Thunberg at the Parliament by the European Parliament 2019, Flickr.

As Environment Rep I have been working with different people, all of whom are passionate about the environment, investigating what WHS can do in our collective fight against climate change. We have identified several areas which we can focus on, including the reducing the amount of single-use plastic in the canteen (in the form of take-away boxes) and reducing the amount of paper we use every day – something which is increasingly happening as we move to digital working practices. It is easy in our everyday lives to forget about such simple and seemingly minor things, but we must be far more aware that our actions do have consequences. When we say, “It’s only one toothbrush” it is almost too easy to forget that almost 7 billion people across the planet will be saying that exact same thing.

Where next for WHS and the environment?

When the Student Leadership Team sat down together in the first term after Easter, one thing we thought was important was to emphasise to all our peers that being conscious of the environment is something that we should be doing all throughout the year. It is for this reason that we have decided not to have a week or day celebrating just this, but to make this a regular feature throughout this academic year. It was great to have a Friday Jammin’ a few weeks back focused on raising our voices to help make a change, with the school community singing songs about climate change to help raise awareness and make a change.

Regarding more specific objectives we have for this year, there are a number of areas that I hope we can focus on. These will help us to make small changes to have a big impact on the environment as a whole community

1. Single-use Plastic

Above: Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

We are all guilty of using single-use plastics in our busy, day-to-day lives. Single-use plastics have detrimental effects on the planet, with a significant amount of it being made from fossil fuels. Two-thirds of all plastic ever made (8.2 billion metric tonnes in 2015) has been disposed of into the environment and is still there; it takes hundreds of years to decompose. Knowing this, we have been trying to reduce the single-use plastic in our canteen, which comes in the form of plastic bottles and other packaged goods, and our end goal is for it to be eliminated completely. While this would be a big step for the school’s fight to reduce its impact, it is also important for individual habits to change. If everyone brought in reusable water bottles, and single-use bottles were to become taboo, that would be a huge step in the right direction. You can also help by using a reusable container for your lunch if you wish to take your lunch away from the canteen.

2. Environment Summit

We have some exciting news coming up! We will be holding a school-wide environment summit for all students, staff and parents. Before this, all the environment reps will be meeting to discuss the agenda for this summit, coming up with a list of points to discuss with the school. At the summit, we shall hopefully draw up a list of criteria that we, as a school, want to implement and stick to. If this all goes to plan, something that we would love to do would be to host a GDST wide summit, so we can share these criteria with many other schools.

The future

We clearly have a very busy year ahead of us, and I hope everyone is as excited about it as I am. I am very honoured to be your environment rep this year, especially in such an important time in regards to environmental awareness. All of these ideas I have mentioned will hopefully have a big impact to our community this year; however, the most significant way to make a change is to be aware of your personal responsibility for the environment, and what you can do to make small changes in your normal routines. If we all did this, the impact would be significant.

1st October 2019

Being Head Girl at WHS

Jasmine, Year 13, describes what her role as Head Girl entails and gives a brief overview of the initiatives for the year ahead

I’m delighted to be Head Girl for Wimbledon High School this academic year! My role as Head Girl entails a lot of different things, most of it being meetings, talking and organising things so I’ll give you a quick rundown of what goes on behind the scenes and our aims for this year.

Saskia, Jasmine and Ella – the Head Girl Team at WHS for 2019-20

I work with Saskia and Ella, the Deputy Head Girls, to lead the Student Leadership Team, coming up with new ideas for whole-school events such as the annual WHS Pride Week (taking place just before half term to celebrate our recent Stonewall Bronze Award!), the school birthday (taking place after half term) and a range of new initiatives that we feel would make the school a better place for all of us. One of our main initiatives this year is PAWHS, standing for Pause at WHS, where we want to recognise the different ways in which students just relax and wind down, without forcing any specific methods on them because we understand the same exercises and activities don’t work for everyone.

We also run school council and have worked closely with Mr Turner, Assistant Head Pastoral, this year to “re-invent” our school council. It now has Year-reps and specific committees with representatives from each year so younger girls can really be involved in leading the school and getting their ideas heard. We also chair student parliament and feedback all the students’ comments and suggestions to the Senior Management Team.

Last year we came up with our overall pastoral theme of Connections, as we felt we wanted our focus to be on how we connect with the wider world, our school and the people in it, and of course how we connect to ourselves. We pitched this to the Senior Management Team and Head of Years and they liked the idea; it is now our pastoral theme for the year. Our aim for this year is to create an environment where students feel connected to each other but also the world around us. Our other aim is to connect to our school, looking at its history, present and future in light of our 140th school birthday, and we are organising a massive school celebration day called “Year-to-Year” to focus on this (linking to the opening line of our school song), which will hopefully be great fun and a memorable day not just for all of us but also for the school in years to come.

Our pastoral theme for 2019-20 – connections. This theme was chosen by our Student Leadership Team.

Being part of the Student Leadership Team is a large responsibility but it is a great opportunity to make even the smallest difference to our amazing school. It is the responsibility of a leader to serve the people around them, to include everyone and their ideas, to set an example and stand up for what is right. I may not have Priyanka’s poise and teacher-like authority, Jessie’s seemingly effortless organisation skills or Ava’s fierce intellect and extensive vocabulary, but I’m learning that’s the beauty of being a Head girl, or any leader, is that you make it your own; for me I think it’s all about being a friendly, approachable face in the corridor, welcoming every girl as she steps in to Wimbledon High.

25th September 2019

The life of a WHS Sports Captain

Emily (Y13) elaborates on her responsibilities as Sports Captain and discusses upcoming sports events

What is my role within the school?

As Sports Captain, I aspire to be a role model that girls can look up to. I myself have looked up to many previous Sports Captains and finally having the chance to represent my school is such an amazing opportunity. I think a Sports Captain should be able to connect with the younger years, work well with the PE department, and spread enthusiasm and a passion to all.

Sports is a huge part of my life and I want to show people that with hard work and determination results will follow. Sport is an amazing thing to be a part of; it teaches you so many life lessons that cannot be readily taught in classrooms. After doing my Extended Project Qualification researching about the impact of sport on teenagers, it has made me even more aware of the importance of being involved and “getting stuck in”.

In such a highly achieving academic school it is sometimes hard to step away from work. I have found, along with many other students here at WHS, that sport is an amazing way to have fun away from screens and books. It is hard to balance work, sport, music, drama and still manage to have a life, but I think that if I can set an example to younger years, it will enable them to see that being an all-rounder is possible.

What do I want to achieve in this role?

I have 4 aims whilst in my role that I hope to achieve:

Launch the sports blog
Work with the PE Department to find a strong Sports Leadership Team that will be able to lead with enthusiasm for all years across the school
Improve the high-performance sports programme with the Head of Sport. It is hard to balance high level sports and academics because much of your free time is spent at trainings and matches. I aim to produce a space where our girls can go for help. In addition to this, I want the programme to give interesting and relevance talks which inspire and inform our high-performance students.
Improve the cricket involvement. Cricket was introduced 2 years ago, and as we go into our 3^rd year, the PE Department and I aim to improve the standard of training and frequency throughout the year which will allow us to fulfil our potential.

The future is exciting!

There are so many exciting events coming up which are still in the process of being organised, such as Staff vs Sixth Form netball and basketball. For those not familiar to this, they are charity events where enthusiastic teachers play against our Sixth Form’s first team and ‘battle it out’ to see who wins. Stay tuned for further information regarding this! Until then training and matches will be commencing and all I can say is get stuck in and try new things, you never know where it could take you.

A few words from me

I am hugely honoured to be Sports Captain for 2019-2020 and I hope that with hard work from me and our PE Department we can achieve higher and have even more fun than before. Good luck for the season, work hard and the wins will follow.

17th September 201917th September 2019

Being a House Captain at WHS…

Lucy (Y13), on behalf of herself and the three other house captains, explains the role of the house captains on the Student Leadership Team and within the school.

What does it take to be a House Captain?

The answer, a (perhaps overly) infectious amount of enthusiasm and spirit to spread to others. Becoming a role model for younger girls as you take on the title as a leader in a different style of community within the school. To encourage, collaborate and, most importantly, enjoy every House event!

As House Captains it is essential that we bring together and lead a family within the school. The House system within Wimbledon High is a wonderful opportunity to provide inter-year bonds across all year groups, setting a precedent for years to come. Regardless of how exciting and competitive our roles may be, the friendships girls make with one another within their Houses proves more valuable to their school life here at Wimbledon High.

What does the role entail?

The possibilities of the role can be endless; it is what you make of it. As House Captain of Arnold, I believe the main priorities of the position are to support and encourage other Arnold girls whatever the opportunity may be, to ensure that they fully express themselves and create a new sense of confidence whilst in a supportive environment. House events allow girls to showcase their talents across the curriculum – from cooking to debating, sport to music – and whilst doing so we hope the girls develop a sense of pride and honour for their House.

After being in the role since the Summer Term, I don’t think I have ever been as enthusiastic for any position than I have been for Arnold House Captain. The rush to decorate the stands for Sports Day last term saw us all getting together to help design posters and banners to fill up the stand with a wash of bright and exciting colour. The day was filled with high spirits from the girls as they, as true Wimbledonians, battled through the unfortunate rain shower. Chanting at the tops of their voices and sprinting to every finish line, to which Arnold (of course) claimed victory! Speaking for all of us, I can confidently say that we have never felt as proud to lead such a vibrant community of girls that day. Our hopes are high for the following year to come…

This year our Student Leadership Team’s theme is Connections. As House Captains, we want to encourage more competition between the houses to raise the profile of each house. By making victories more visible throughout the school we hope that this creates a competitive spirit and feeling of pride and identity to each girl’s house. We wish to carry this new ambition into House events this year as House Music has just got underway this week with the raffle drawn of the decades. With Meredith winning confidently last year, House Music is one of the most passionately contested events of the year and with the encouragement and spirit of the girls we all hope to do our Houses proud by conducting each performance. Although, I have rather ambitious hopes for Arnold this year with the 80s… best decade, surely, we have to win

Despite only taking on the role as House Captain for one term so far, I can confidently say we have all jumped into the exciting role with great commitment and energy. Our message to girls in our houses is to put yourself forward, to get involved and to make friends with girls in other year groups. We hope to fulfil our role to the school with even more passion and excitement to make this year the most highly contested year for the Houses!

May the best house win…