The Highs and Lows of a Principal’s Week
The Highs and Lows of a Principal’s Week
Now that the hectic period of Orientation Week has finished, the College has settled down and has finished its first week of normal classes for the new 1st Year students. For the 2nd Year students, work for the final year of the IB has begun in earnest. I would like to say that everything is now running like clockwork, but of course that is impossible in any school, anywhere. If it were the case, no school would need a principal to provide leadership or attempt to solve with sensitivity and wisdom the problems that inevitably arise when people live and work together! A principal’s week is always peppered with planned and unplanned meetings, the challenges of protecting the welfare of students against all sorts of unforeseen challenges (often without them ever knowing!), the need to protect the College’s viability, legality and future, interspersed with the humdrum of routine paperwork, and... what can I say - hundreds of diverse but necessary things!
A real highlight of this week for me has been the series of four ‘welcome drinks’ receptions that Di and I have hosted in our home for the new 1st Year students. This has been an enjoyable and relaxing time to get to know the 1st Years in small groups - if groups of 32 could be considered small! And what an outstanding group of young men and women they are, every one of them having a fascinating story to tell about their home, their family, their selection process, their initial impressions upon first seeing Hong Kong on the drive to the College, their reflections on Orientation Week, and most importantly, their aspirations for the coming two years at LPCUWC. Getting to know these students has been a privilege, and I know it is going to continue to be a great thrill for Di and me over the coming weeks and months!
To digress for a moment, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great English poet, W.H. Auden. In one of his most beautiful poems (I think), Auden talks about the ache we feel when we are away from the familiarity of our homes. This is a real emotion for many of our students at this early stage of the new academic year. Auden came from Yorkshire in England, where the landscape is shaped by its limestone geology. Drawing a parallel between limestone and relationships between people (which he also likens to dissolving in water), and the undercurrents of human relationships (that he likens to underground caves and conduits), he wrote these words at the start of his poem “In Praise of Limestone” which may provide comfort or inspiration to homesick students:
If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved...
An important element of residential life at LPCUWC - being away from one’s normal home - is the tutor group. Tutor groups are like families away from home, even for our Hong Kong students given that our College is fully residential. So, on Wednesday night, Di and I hosted a special international dinner at our home for our own tutor group. This was a great evening - the 2nd Year members of the group cooked dinner to welcome the new 1st Years. We had appetisers from Macedonia, main course from Mexico, and two desserts, one from China and one from Australia. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, capped off by watching an episode of Fawlty Towers together on the large screen.
Last Saturday, the entire College community shared a spectacular international evening in the canteen, during which (almost) everyone came in national dress to enjoy a spectacular buffet meal of food from 6 of the 7 continents of the world (actually, all 7 if you think of the ice in the drinks as coming from Antarctica!), prepared jointly by our catering staff and many of our 2nd Year students. This was followed by a one and a half hour international show, during which 2nd Year students showcased their respective regions with a sensational variety show featuring songs, humour, dances and skits, all tinged with satire and some very perceptive observations about some of the issues that need tackling before we can be more comfortable with the state of our world. The night concluded with a disco in the canteen with music and dancing until 1 am - I know because I shared the final shift of supervision.
I was intending to feature a spectacular image from the international evening as my ‘photo of the week’, and also post several other smaller images from that event to share with you, but one other happening - much less pleasant - changed my mind. Towards the end of the week, I was the subject of a malicious Facebook attack when a group of (many adjectives omitted here) students from one of my former schools hijacked a group, closed it to uninvited guests, removed a number of comments expressing gratitude and thanks for things I had done for them, and began using it as a public venue for vindictive and malicious, not to say libellous and defamatory, comments. They uploaded private family photographs without permission after hacking into one of my networks, refused to remove the images when asked, and added offensive and sometimes racist comments about me, my family and current students at LPCUWC. That is the reason I have not uploaded any high resolution images containing pictures of our students this week - I feel that I need to protect my students from this type of public abuse, especially at the moment. It is also a warning to anyone using Facebook to check their security settings from time to time, as the world does contain people who are not as well-intentioned as we might hope!
So - why have I chosen to include an image from Malawi instead this week? I took the photograph one afternoon in January this year when I was being shown around Lilongwe by Selwyn, who was then an applicant for a teaching position here at LPCUWC. I had travelled to Lilongwe to interview him, meet his family, see him teach in the classroom, and chat with some of his referees. During my time there, Selwyn took me to see a local primary school where he and his students had been involved in voluntary service work; the market in the photograph was quite close by. I am delighted to say that Selwyn is now on the staff at LPCUWC - but all this has nothing whatever to do with why I have used the image!
My reason for choosing it is that, unusually, one of my highlights this week had very little to do with LPCUWC. As many of you would know, one of my hobbies is writing books (some details of which can be seen HERE). This week, my 25th book was published, a new and updated 4th edition of my book for IB Geography, titled “Planet Geography”. There are few feelings that can rival the thrill of holding a printed copy of a book that you have written yourself in your own hands. In my case, there is the extra thrill of seeing over 1200 of my own colour photographs included, bringing back memories of many happy times spent in the field. The cover photo, which also wraps around the spine, is cropped from the image I have used for my blog this week. It also forms the theme for the book’s website, which can be accessed using the link www.planetgeography.com.
Hopefully this image of the market at Chinsapo is unattractive to hackers, has little potential for abusive comments, and thus protects my students from offensive remarks by ignorant outsiders.
For me, the image is a reminder that in our troubled world, there is colour, diversity, wonder, and talent - and that is a great recipe for a positive future and a better world.
Sunday, 16 September 2007
A small stall selling locally made cloth in Chinsapo, a district on the rural-urban fringe of Lilongwe, capital city of Malawi.
Why did I choose an image from a fairly remote corner of Africa as my photo for this week? Read on.....