English Despite initial fears that forced exclusion from school would be damaging to pupils’ academic progress, we should have known that they would adapt and excel in the same way they always have done, settling into Teams and remote learning as if they’d never known anything different. The calibre of work and endeavour, at all levels, has been hugely impressive over these past few months. I have noticed in many an accelerated development of independent learning skills, with routine assignments planned, executed and edited much more carefully than they would have been under normal conditions and the constant juggling of tight deadlines. In English we
have also witnessed a blossoming of student initiative, nowhere more so than in Zoe Blackburn’s launch of a ‘virtual LitSoc’: meeting together at the end of every week, with discussion often extending beyond the designated hour, we have enjoyed presentations on writers as diverse as Jericho Brown, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Anthony Burgess, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
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The Churcherian 2020
In the earlier part of the school year we were pleased to welcome local author Vicky Holmes to Churcher’s. Creator of the popular ‘Warrior Cats’ series, Vicky delivered a workshop for the First Years, culminating in a 500 word story competition (won by
Albert Wheeler, with Moritz Flohr and Lily Brady highly commended). Our other most significant visitor was Dr Sophie Duncan, Fellow in English at Christ Church, Oxford, who gave a workshop on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to our Sixth Form students, followed by a broader contextual lecture on the representations of women in Victorian literature. Already familiar to our students from her series of Massolit lectures, Sophie was enthusiastically received and we hope to be welcoming her back soon. Another highlight of the year was the ESU public speaking competition. So popular was it amongst local schools this year that we were asked to host
