The Roundup - Edition 57

A message from 
Rich Jones, Head.

I remember the very moment that reading ‘clicked’ for me. 

I had always loved going to the local library with my dad and going through shelves of smelly books, mainly looking for exciting front covers. Sharks, violence and attacks on Nazis were my main ‘go to’ covers and, I guess anything with a dramatic explosion helped too. My main contenders tended to be the slightly unimaginatively entitled ‘Adventure’ series by Willard Price – Shark Adventure, Arctic Adventure, and Elephant Adventure to name a few. Then, of course, the Biggles series about the British flying ace….Biggles, so more imaginative titles such as Biggles Defies the Nazis, Biggles Defends the Desert and the shocking(!) Biggles Fails to Return.

Sadly, and predictably, after reading the first couple of pages, I would always give up after boredom set in. Where were the attacks, the excitement and the explosions in the first paragraph, I would think?

However, on a cash-strapped family camping holiday to mid Wales (think evaporated milk, freezing to death, endless word searches, castle visits and sharing bottles of dandelion and burdock soda) it was about 5.00am, I awoke in my damp sleeping bag as my family snored away and I couldn’t get back to sleep. After trying everything I found my older brother’s book and started to flick through it, even though the cover was just a picture of a man with a rabbit (hardly defying the Reich). Anyway, I read the first page. Stopped, bored. So bored, I started again. Stopped, bored. Everyone was still snoring and the rain started again. I ended up reading the whole chapter and stopped again, I had kicked my brother so hard, that he was now awake.  

After breakfast, I felt a curious feeling. 

I wanted to know what was happening to one of the characters, Lenny. So much so, and to the avid shock of my parents I got back into my soggy sleeping bag and … read. I needed to know, had to explore what happened and was compelled to see if things were okay. By the late afternoon, I had finished Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It was a road to Damascus moment and I will never forget it – the power of imagination, of narrative, of story and of excitement. I was 14 and have been reading voraciously since. 

Books and literature are so vital to who we are. Books help us to understand the human condition and we can be catapulted into eras, worlds and experiences we never thought possible, raising questions about what we value. 

Having World Book Day celebrated so wonderfully across the whole school this week is a testament to the importance and power of words. At St Chris we value what words offer – fundamentally:  opportunity, experience and curiosity. 

The reason I found and still find Of Mice and Men so powerful is that it is a simple yet devastating tale of friendship, broken plans, dreams and sacrifice. Moreover, it is about the human capacity for empathy. 

Next week is Empathy Week at St Chris with a series of activities and opportunities for our students to really try and see alternative views, about being non-judgemental and embracing difference. Given the international news currently, this week couldn’t come sooner. 

Empathy is vital if we are going to succeed, together. 

I will leave you today with a poem. I did plan an entirely different Roundup for today but Iain in the Junior School sent this through (as he dressed as a teacher earlier this week) and mentioned how powerful he felt this simple poem is and how it addresses many of our values of service, experience and fostering curiosity. 

And with a literacy festival this week and empathy week next week – it couldn’t be more apt. 

Our teacher told us one day he would leave
And sail across a warm blue sea
To places he had only known from maps,
And all his life had longed to be.

The house he lived in was narrow and grey
But in his mind's eye he could see
Sweet-scented jasmine clinging to the walls,
And green leaves burning on an orange tree.

He spoke of the lands he longed to visit,
Where it was never drab or cold.
I couldn't understand why he never left,
And shook off the school's stranglehold.

Then halfway through his final term
He took ill and never returned.
And he never got to that place on the map
Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.

The maps were redrawn on the classroom wall;
His name was forgotten, it faded away.
But a lesson he never knew he taught
Is with me to this day.

I travel to where the green leaves burn,
To where the ocean's glass-clear and blue,
To all those places my teacher taught me to love
But which he never knew.