HEADMASTER’S FOREWORD

Never has Shamal felt more like an appropriate name for our school magazine than this year. A shamal, of course, is a type of desert storm which sweeps down through the Gulf during various seasons of the year, and I hope you will agree that the written artefact which you are reading captures something of the whirlwind of events which have taken place during this first year of the global pandemic.

It will, I hope, become a well-thumbed record of your school year in review, something to revisit with your friends and relatives in the future as you observe and recall the curiosity of the protocols we had to put in place and you had to endure. For me, this year’s Shamal will also be a lasting testament to your remarkable good grace, agility, optimism, and resilience. You have all still achieved so much despite social distancing, mask wearing, 50/50 class rotations and numerous sporting, musical and dramatic cancellations.

Naming the record of our school year Shamal normally works as a playful metaphor. Our experience this year, however, has felt more literal. Serious shamals, which can be thousands of feet deep, typically impact health and transport, visibility and perspective become limited, and flights get cancelled. The economy can be impacted in the short term and once the shamal has passed there can be a great deal of repair work to be done. COVID-19 has certainly been our shamal.

As a school we are usually proud of the tradition of quality in education we provide, and yet students, teachers, drivers, conductors, cleaners, administrators, and managers have all had to jettison so much of what worked traditionally and replace it with our best guess of an innovative solution. In so doing, we have met with both triumph and disaster.

Our ability to run a blended classroom to accommodate the ebb and flow of staff and students who have been diagnosed as COVID positive or have been close contacts, has kept our education flowing without pause. Nine separate timetables re-written every four weeks by Mr Agent and inputted by Adnan, our MIS manager, have enabled as many students as possible to attend school physically.

Teachers have never had as high a step count at work as they have this year, traipsing as they have been throughout the site to unfamiliar classrooms, battling with different IT settings in dozens of locations to keep students safer. Year 11 and Year 13 students have also had their public examinations cancelled for the second year in a row and teaching staff have had to assimilate a second new UK-government mandated system in as many years to ensure that grades are awarded fairly.

And yet, while we have successfully run online parents’ consultation evenings, open days, assemblies, PosEd days and ECAs with great success, we met with disappointment in the live streaming of Prize Day and Year 13 graduation by outsourcing both events to the ‘experts’. There is a certainly a lesson for us there. No inter-school sports fixtures have taken place on site, nor music concerts or a whole school production; events which are the lifeblood of our school.

While physically tiring and intellectually challenging, this year has also been emotionally draining for many staff and students. COVID-19 has been indiscriminate in its choice of victims, and our thoughts and prayers go out to every member of our community who have lost loved ones since the outbreak. Never has the flight home (wherever home may be) felt longer than it has this year. On this, I commend the staff of Dubai College unreservedly. In order to serve our school, almost all staff have forgone home leave to ensure that DC could keep its own home fires burning.

Even at this late stage of the year, plans for the summer remain uncertain. Never have we all speculated and anticipated so fervently about a traffic light system for global travel and the implications of travelling from Schengen visa zones to green zones. As with so much of the year gone by, whatever will be, will be. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”.

As we draw this year to a close, I wish to pass on my thanks to all the staff, students and parents of Dubai College for their support, forbearance and community spirit. In particular, I would like to thank our departing staff for their service to the College, whether that is over several years or several decades. Our departing teachers this year are Mrs S Abdulhadi, Miss L Clohesy, Mr S Forsyth, Mr D Jackson, Mr G Jeffcote, Mrs C Moulson, Mr S Teasel and Mrs K Thompson. My thanks also to our other departing experts Mrs V Banks, Mrs L Begley, Mr K Dempsey, Mrs A Kirkaldy and Mr M Samways.

Mr Michael Lambert Headmaster

Mr Edward Quinlan Chairman of the Board of Governors Mr Michael Lambert Headmaster