St Joseph's College Lent Newsletter

Lent Term Newsletter 2021

Message from the Principal

Dear Parent As I put a virtual pen to paper, I sincerely hope that this is the final period of lockdown in a school term that we all have to live, teach, learn and work through.

It has been a joy to have all students and staff back on campus since Monday 8 March. It has also been uplifting to feel the community come alive again with some of our traditional routines of school life back in place and some new ones added, including the wearing of masks indoors in the Senior School.

I remain amazed by your children’s resilience and energy, in particular those in examination years who continue to look to the future with excitement and optimism - they are a real credit to you as parents and the St Jo’s family.

We are immensely grateful to all parents who have supported their children’s online learning and to the staff who have provided a full online curriculum.

We are looking forward, with fingers crossed, to a more community-focused Summer Term, with live events and parents back on campus to celebrate our students’ educational landmarks.

The Summer Term commences for students on Tuesday 20 April.

Until then, I wish you all a peaceful and refreshing Easter holiday.

Mrs Danielle Clarke Principal

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A Word from Mrs Wood

It has been such a pleasure to see our Prep School pupils reunited in school from the beginning of March. They have renewed friendships, spent time in one another's company and thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor space in the College grounds, whether the outside lessons are forest schools, engineering or sports. It's so good to be back - schools and teachers need children and seeing all of them on screen is no substitute.

We have all been moving through uncharted waters; none more so than our Prep School pupils, who have been learning online each day, meeting their teachers and sharing ideas on a virtual platform, taking part in ‘live’ but solitary PE sessions and most of all missing their friends and the company of their peers.

I believe now is a time for aspiration and optimism. We are all in the need of small miracles and our pupils need to be allowed to dream of the future. They have all shown resilience, creativity, self-discipline and patience over the past year. So, from here we move forward, and we harness the skills they have developed (their digital learning accomplishments are impressive). We will start talking with positivity about how brilliant each and every one of them is. I won't talk of a lost future; I only see a bright future, where our children excel in their own personal learning journey. Will they be ready for Senior School? Of course they will, because in the Prep School we view the whole child and recognise all accomplishments, however small.

I look forward to a happy Summer Term with all the pupils. It is so delightful to have the St Joseph’s family together again.

Mrs Wood Head of Prep School

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News from the Prep School

Learning the Ropes of 21st Century Citizenship The Census Counting day in Year 2 was jam-packed with activity. The children learnt about the history and purpose of the census, and what data and statistics are, before carrying out their own number crunching by analysing the number of pets in KS1. They produced tally, pie and bar charts to illustrate their findings. Having looked at animals from around the world in their topic this term, the girls and boys then produced a mega pictogram to show their favourites. Top of the list was the lovable koala and the runner up, somewhat surprisingly, was the hyena. Well done Year 2 – great job!

Sweet and Fluffy Mathematics with a Point Year 2 certainly enjoyed finding out about the edges and vertices of three-dimensional shapes. Who knew spaghetti and marshmallows were integral to Maths!

A Star-Spangled Breakfast for Year 1 The boys and girls in Year 1 have been learning about the continent of North America and they celebrated their return to school after the lockdown with an American breakfast of pancakes.

Pass the maple syrup!

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Hats Off to their Tributes to the Natural World Year 2 astonished their teachers with the amazing hats they created to represent their favourite country or its animals! They complemented their artistic endeavours by presenting superbly researched facts to their classmates. Their impressive creativity was also sparked by producing dioramas of different habitats for Science and drawing Rousseauesque tigers for Art. In DT they have constructed moving wing mechanisms for recreations of the colourful birds from the Australian Dreamtime stories they have been reading in Literacy.

Boudica-lious Learning is a Blast from the Past Years 3 and 4 were both excited and awe-struck when their cross-curricular Literacy and History lesson combined the ancient and modern worlds. When writing questions that they would like to ask the iconic and fearsome woman who was Boudica, none of the children thought they would actually be able to put them to her, but all is possible with the powers of technology and a video call was made. The ancient queen lived up to her fierce reputation and spent 40 minutes snapping and barking answers to questions and giving a deeper insight into what life was like during Roman times. Mr Weaver had more cause than most to address the Iceni Queen (Mrs Weaver) with the respect she demanded…

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Pupils Play with Form and Function Happy 70th birthday, Dennis – the Beano character, that is – created from a potato by Dominic Chester (Y6). We had a wonderful response to our challenge to transform potatoes into favourite book characters, with everyone from Clarice Bean to Red Riding Hood appearing alongside Zog and the Gruffalo.

Creative thinking has also been demanded of our young engineers, with Year 5 and 6 students working on making buoyant platforms to carry weights, a challenge thrown down by James Dyson, marble runs and spaghetti bridges.

Here are some examples, courtesy of Year 5’s André Josse, Clara Fox and Emilia Smith.

Fresh Air, Exercise and Public Service. Well done, Lily!

Excellent service to the environment by Year 4 pupil Lily Cooper, who dedicated part of her half term break to collecting rubbish left around Alton Water by less public-spirited visitors to the beauty spot. Her bag was full after just one kilometre!

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Wonder Walls All Around We would like to send heartfelt thanks to all those parents who allowed their homes and gardens to become building sites so our industrious Year 4 girls and boys could construct models of Hadrian’s Wall. Building materials were diverse – everything from chocolate cake and glazed tiles to Lego bricks and breeze blocks. Thank you, Mums and Dads.

Hope it all vacuumed up nicely. Pictured overlooking her creation is Lucy Eeles.

Prep School Sport Children in the Prep School were actively engaged in live lessons throughout the period of online learning and have brought some brilliant new skills back into their classrooms. Thank you to all the families who furiously searched garages and washing baskets for skipping ropes, balls, yoga mats and rolled up socks (to juggle with). As well as being active and laughing together as we star jumped, dynamically balanced and calmly meditated through our PE lessons, we also took part in some fabulous challenges.

The skills learned whilst joining schools across the area through the School Games Partnership were amazing. Patios and playgrounds have been flooded with skipping ropes and our pupils have bounced, double bounced and slalomed their way back into school. Some Year 6 children have added crossovers and team tricks. The boost to their co-ordination, agility and fitness levels has been fantastic and the sound of giggling, albeit slightly out of breath, has made a welcome return to our break times.

In games and PE we have made a start on our summer sports and look forward optimistically to the potential for matches in the Summer Term, alongside House competitions and sports day.

The cricketers have been working hard on their striking and fielding skills, with some awesome work on their bowling. Stumps have been flying and we look forward to seeing these budding superstars in action.

Finally, Mr Pruden and Mr Skuse have been working with the Prep PE staff to build on some of the footballing brilliance in Years 5 and 6. It has been a highlight of our return to school to see girls and boys displaying energy and determination to succeed in their football sessions.

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Deep and Crisp and Even Making the Most of Snow Days…

Whether still in school, as a boarder or the child of a critical worker, or at home learning online, our students responded gleefully to the snowy days before half term. There was a great deal of fun for fun’s sake, but the fall of the white stuff also triggered various educational and creative opportunities.

Mr Howard was delighted with entries in the Ice Sculpture Competition and offered a big well done to all who took part. The winner was Robert Ransome (Y8) for his igloo. Millie Strafford (Y7), Ben Dearsley (Y7) and Nyah Gaskin-Barber (Y9) were highly commended for their armchair, ‘Revenge of the Snow Bunny’ and snow dog.

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Poppy Kent (Y5) made a snölykta, a traditional Swedish snow lantern. The lantern is a hollow cone built using snowballs, which glows when a candle is placed inside. You made light work of that, Poppy!

Climate research is on the radar of our Year 1 pupils, who have been learning about the contrasting continents of Antarctica and Australia. They have researched the animals that inhabit both locations and created fact files. A light sprinkling of snow inspired Edward Harvey to mount his own Antarcticstyle expedition and he was lucky enough to discover an emperor penguin in his garden!

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Staff in the Spotlight Mr Orris IT Network Manager Having entered the field of IT immediately after leaving school, I soon built up valuable experience, moving from the ‘config bench’ - on to warranty repairs and then on-site installations at The Guardian newspaper, Flight Centre travel agency, schools and universities. It made me realise I did not want a static career behind a desk.

I joined St Joseph’s College in 2012 on an initial three-year contract and fell in love with the place. It’s the family atmosphere that gets you and now I have family here too – twin daughters in Year 11.

The beauty of the IT role is that it is spread across every department of the school, from Marketing and Admin to the Prep School and Art. I am never doing the same thing two days running.

It is also peppered with big projects. The College was an early adopter of Google, going over from Windows XP back in 2014, and that decision proved crucial. It gave us six years’ head start on thousands of other schools in readiness to move over to online learning, even ahead of the first lockdown coming into force. The infrastructure and experience we had in place put us right at the head of the curve and that is where we want to stay.

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Apart from the ‘day job’, my role encompasses the extra-curricular events St Joseph’s is known for: including the Arts Festival, the annual College musical, the Fashion Show, charity events (such as concerts with West End star Ruthie Henshall), and the fabulous Rugby Festival.

When my involvement with the Festival began in my first year here, the scoring was done on an Excel spreadsheet and spectators crowded around a window to view the results. Now the Festival is streamed live across the world and some 60,000 watch the action.

Outside of work I spend a lot of time enjoying the Suffolk coast, where I am lucky enough to live.

Accentuating the Positive and Giving Credit Where Credit is Due ‘...need (the mother of all inventions) taught them’, so writes Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan, 1651. We have all certainly been pushed to try different ways of doing things through these challenging times.

In the whole school assembly I delivered back in September on the subject of Charles Darwin, we looked at his theory of evolution and natural selection, how those creatures who can best adapt to changes in their environment are more likely to survive and thrive. Hopefully without sounding blasé or arrogant, I can certainly say that the staff and students have passed this challenge so far.

Whilst there have been some blips along the way, the College teaching and support staff have adjusted superbly to the new reality. Over a weekend in March 2020 we went from only one or two departments ever actually using Google Classroom to being a fully-fledged online school with lessons delivered as per timetable through the day. As staff gained experience more lessons became live Google Meets and Microsoft Teams Meets. By ‘Lockdown II’ live lessons were the standard and staff were trialling several new platforms to make them more interactive.

The conferencing equipment which the College purchased over the summer to bring our international students - whilst away in quarantine or awaiting a reduction in transmission rates - into the classroom proved a great investment. The term ‘concurrent teaching’ entered the teacher lexicon (teacher in the room with a live class whilst simultaneously teaching students in different parts of the world virtually).

Use of the technology grew and soon teaching staff who were self-isolating at home were ensuring the continuity of learning and were beaming into lessons on the whiteboard whilst communicating with their classes on the conferencing speaker.

One day in October I was surprised to see two lessons taking place in the Sixth Form bubble area (the English Faculty), being delivered by teachers from their homes, who were simultaneously delivering to students in three other countries along with a number of day students isolating on or off the campus for other reasons!

Nothing can be as good as being physically in a live classroom with your teacher and this year has certainly taught us that we crave human interaction where possible. Where that is not possible, however, the alternatives can be very good indeed. The College has decided to build upon its experience and launch an e A-level and e GCSE offering to international students who, for one reason or another, are not yet ready to take the plunge of moving countries.

Without the students stepping up and engaging with us online the teaching we have delivered over this period could never have been so successful. As a staff we are incredibly proud of the resilience and enthusiasm they displayed throughout the lockdowns. By and large the ‘cameras on at the start and end of a lesson’ rule was observed for Lockdown II and our students themselves improved in their ability to use Google Classroom.

To grab the positives from the experience, many of our students have become better organised and more independent in their learning than previously. I know this is not the case for all and where necessary we are intervening to close the gap between students where it has widened, but, overall, I would reject the idea that students are ‘behind’ per se. Behind what or whom exactly? In fact, notions of ‘behind’ are simply wrong and in some ways damaging to student wellbeing.

The whole national cohort have been through - and are still enduring- a global pandemic; our students are simply where they are. Our task is to fill the knowledge, skills and understanding gaps assiduously where we find them, adjusting timescales to take into account the disruption students have experienced and prepare them for whatever adjusted examination systems are implemented.

If we can seize further positives from these times, conversations with students about their experience of lockdown abound with stories about new life-skills acquired, such as meal preparation, and quality time spent with parents on walks and during other exercise.

As a College we have discovered the joy of Zoom Parent Meets - who would have thought they would turn out to be more popular with both parents and teachers than the ‘in the flesh’ variety? It seems that this will be one change that will survive the pandemic, and one we might not otherwise have tried. We have all learnt lessons and as a College we have every intention of emerging stronger and better from this experience.

Mr Cinnamond Deputy Principal 11

Teacher in the Spotlight Miss Yearsley Teacher of Art and Design I joined St Joseph’s College as a member of the Creative and Performing Arts faculty in September 2020. I came to work at St Jo’s after deciding to move from my last location in Dover, where my first teaching post was at a military and boarding school, in order to move closer and spend more time with my partner, who is posted in Suffolk.

Upon my first visit to St Jo’s I fell in love with it and the sense of community, and I was thrilled to be able to spend time teaching and progressing my professional career here, After attaining a BA (Hons) degree in Graphic Design at Leeds College of Art (now renamed Leeds Arts University), I returned to my home city of Manchester to complete a PGCE in Secondary Education. I wanted to pursue a career in teaching in order to inspire and motivate students to explore creativity and realise the importance of creative subjects.

Specialising in art, photography and graphic design, I am passionate about the use of colour within creative processes and using mixed media to create unique and interesting pieces.

Outside of school, I thoroughly enjoy heading out on cross country trail runs and taking my two dogs, Buzz and Peanut, out on long beach and forest walks.

In addition to enjoying spending time outdoors, one of my other passions is to travel. The past couple of years have brought adventures island hopping in Thailand, to Mexico where ancient ruins and underwater caves were explored and interrailing across Europe from Croatia to Poland, plus several stops in between.

I hope my next adventure will be snorkelling with whale sharks!

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Creativity Unlocked Whether working at home during the lockdown or back in our busy art studios, St Joseph’s College students have been inspired and buzzing to create fabulous works of art, using materials as diverse as clay, coffee, paper and fabric. Art challenges during the period of online learning proved popular. On this page are a few examples of work produced.

Modelling has ranged from a clay workshop for Year 7, which inspired the creation of a horde of charmingly grotesque little figures, through to the nationally recognised sculptures of Upper Sixth Form student Leo Bignell. The painstaking detail of Leo’s exquisite creations in cardboard and other materials has led to him being recognised by the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) as one of the 20 most exceptional candidates in the RBA Star Students competition.

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News from the Senior School Surging into Gold Medal Position Top marks to our leading Year 9 and 10 mathematicians who took part in the UK Maths Challenge in place of the Year 11s, who are currently concentrating on their GCSE studies. Dani Tong Li and Joanne Gu (both Y10) performed exceptionally well to gain highly impressive Gold awards, and surge past the Gold boundary to earn their place in the top one percent of the many hundreds of thousands of entrants. They qualified for the incredibly demanding Pink Kangaroo competition and are awaiting their results. Away from the competition, Dani and Joanne are aiming for a top grade in GCSE Mathematics, of course, and also in GCSE Further Mathematics, an extra option that the College is pleased to offer Maths high fliers.

We would also like to commend some of our other UK Maths Challenge star performers: Ronnie Thorold (Y10), Hazel Hwang (Y10) and Xanthé Baker-Woods (Y9).

Amy Smashes A Personal No Chocolate Challenge Amy Brown in Year 9 raised £480.00 for the Shooting Star Children's Hospices by giving up chocolate for a whole year! Amy got to know about the charity and chose it because it was close to her previous family home.

Shooting Star supports over 700 children and their families – from throughout Surrey and across 15 boroughs of London, 365 days a year.

Amy’s next challenge is to give up tomato sauce and mayonnaise. Well done, Amy, that’s not an easy thing to do!

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Kitchen Counter Science During the weeks away from school for lockdown, our students were able to keep up with their practical scientific work by clever use of materials at hand and by reimagining their kitchens as laboratories.

Year 7 students dissolved coffee and gravy granules in order to investigate diffusion and how its rate is affected by temperature.

They concluded that diffusion takes place more rapidly in hot water.

Another experiment by Year 8 used evaporation to extract the salt from a saltwater solution.

St Joseph’s Reunited and Determined to Have Fun We have loved being back together again on the campus – whether eating together in Refs, passing the time of day with friends, enjoying our clubs or raising money for Comic Relief. Special thanks to all our gallant ‘victims’ who allowed students to use them as target practice on Red Nose Day, including Mr Briffa sporting safety googles. The escalation from a thrown sponge to a proper drenching was taken in good part as the price rose with the quantity of water dispensed.

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You’re Never Lonely with a Book We celebrate reading every day at St Joseph’s College but we also marked both World Book Day and National Storytelling Week. The staff of the English Faculty gave a collaborative reading of a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury and book reviews by members of the teaching and support staff were shared on social media.

Mrs Rowlands led a World Book Day Assembly, citing evidence linking a keen reading habit with academic success. No real surprise but the figures are stark.

Prep staff shared some of their favourite books to read aloud during National Storytelling Week and encouraged the girls and boys to think about their own favourites and create potato models of best-loved characters.

Over recent months books have offered enormous comfort, entertainment and adventure while we have been staying safely at home. Appreciative audiences have included other family members and, for Liam Scheffler Gonzales (Y2), some very attentive superheroes.

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Senior School Sport Despite the fact that we have played no fixtures in the past year, St Joseph’s College has managed to support and nurture students, engaging their interest in health and wellbeing, all the way through from healthy lifestyles for all to meeting the specific requirements of those elite players embarking on careers in professional sport and university sports courses.

The dedication to rugby of Head Boy Harri Williams is clear for all to see as he approaches the start of a full-time career with Scarlets. So, too, is that of Leroy O’Neil (U6), invited to take a trial for Northampton Saints.

Footballers Justin Byles (Y11) and Jonah Sigsworth (U6) have been called up to the Cayman Islands squad for World Cup qualifying matches. A fellow teammate there is Jackson Kirkconnell OB, who spent two years at St Joseph’s College.

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There is evidence across the campus of how much we are looking forward to our summer sport of cricket, with the summer cricket program beginning three weeks earlier than usual, engaging both boys and girls across every year group. Competitive cricket fixtures have already been organised.

One positive to have emerged during the lockdown period was an eagerness to build foundations for lifelong exercise. The links between exercise and mental wellbeing are clearly established and the webinars we have hosted about mental resilience have proved to extremely popular, both with those interested in living healthily and those taking on the additional demands of performance sport.

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It’s All Money in the Bank

Old Birkfeldians

Rugby Festival Founder Never Lost His Passion for the Sport Mr Alan George, former PE teacher and rugby coach at Oakhill – our former Prep school site - and St Joseph’s College senior school, has died at the age of 71. Mr George was instrumental in setting up the St Joseph’s College National Rugby Festival, which has grown to become a leading annual event in schools’ rugby.

Mr George and his former wife, Carolyn, were married in the College Chapel and spent the first year of their married life in Gate Cottage, when Alan was a housemaster. They remained devoted friends. Just as constant was Mr George’s passion for rugby, which never waned. He went on to become Director of Rugby at Sheffield Hallam Men’s Rugby Union Expressing her sympathy and praising Mr George’s foresight and ambition for the game, Mrs Clarke, Principal of St Joseph’s College, said the Festival had played a pivotal role in the journey to adulthood for boys over the past three decades.

‘I know how this sport bonds boys, families and the whole community together – we are very grateful to those who led the way with rugby as it is has benefitted literally hundreds in so many different ways,’ she said.

Mr George leaves four children, Bryony, Huw, Anna and Tom, seven grandchildren and two step grandchildren. He was immensely proud of them all.

An excellent insight into the world of finance has been granted to Christine Liao OB, who has secured a Spring Break Placement on the prestigious HSBC programme.

Christine finished at St Joseph’s College last summer with A*A*A*A grades in her A-levels and is now reading Economics at Warwick University. Congratulations Christine.

Excellent Ambassador for Degree Apprenticeships Zoe Asbury OB, who left St Joseph’s with A*A*A*A grades in her Business, Geography and Economics A-levels and EPQ, to join Unilever for an IT Project Manager Degree Apprenticeship, has won an Owned It award for her work in automation and IT delivery. The award was presented during #ApprenticeshipWeek.

Zoe was also nominated by her colleagues for the individual award in the GeoIT Europe recognitions and finished as runnerup.

In a message back to the College she said, ‘Writing this now, having left St Jo’s in 2018 seems very surreal. I have nearly completed my Degree Apprenticeship in Chartered Management sponsored by Unilever, where I am an IT Project Manager, delivering technology innovation programmes to our Supply chain teams in the UK & Ireland market.

‘For me, this opportunity at Unilever was perfect as I am able to gain a degree and put the theory into practice on a daily basis. I am also able to gain real business experience which challenges me, whilst experiencing lots of exciting opportunities.

‘I thank St Jo’s for providing me the skills, attitude, morals and ethos to succeed in life, as well as the support and confidence the Sixth Form team gave me to find opportunities such as Unilever’s degree scheme outside the normal university route.

One route does not fit everyone; don’t be scared to go outside the normal university route!'

Wise words, Zoe - we will look forward to following your career journey.

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Thank You for Your Feedback; We’re Positively Glowing!

A heartfelt thank you to all those families who contacted us during lockdown and this half of the term to let us know how online teaching & learning and webinars for parents have worked for them.

St Joseph’s College took – and continues to take - a prompt, proactive and positive approach to delivering education safely and effectively, whether it be at a distance or here on the campus. The past year has presented unique challenges and our staff have attempted to navigate every obstacle thrown in their path with ingenious, helpful and good-humoured strategies. We could not be prouder to receive the sort of feedback reproduced here:

‘I just wanted to drop you a note to say how thankful I am of the fantastic support that we are receiving from X. Y has been struggling with online learning more and more. X has offered thorough advice, support and feedback which will hopefully get us through the last push to half term!

It’s always a comfort to know how much the staff care, even when the students are at home.’

‘We would just like to say that this week’s restart of home learning has been fantastic. The addition of Google Meets for most lessons makes it more like ‘school at home’, with teachers explaining the lessons, answering questions and leading discussions. It must be quite intensive to be online so much of the day as a teacher, but it also means the children don’t miss out on at least seeing you, and each other, during the lockdown.'

'Thank you to you and your team for continuing to do a fantastic job especially under such difficult times.'

‘I would just like to feedback about X’s Geography lesson today with Y (member of staff). I was working in the background for the whole lesson.

The quality of the lesson was excellent. There was no opportunity for children to hide behind the fact it was online as they were encouraged by name throughout.’

‘So, well done to everyone in making this a success... from teachers being well prepared and concise in their feedback to the IT team working behind the scenes, putting all the processes and links in place to support everyone.'

‘On a personal level, I had none of the stress of getting to the school on time, no hanging around wondering who’s ahead of me and how long they’re going to be and no worries about organising dinner afterwards. A winner from the Z family!’

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‘The quality of the online lessons has been excellent and has kept X engaged, many thanks to you all for your hard work during these trying times.’

‘From a parent’s point of view, it is better this time round as we can be on hand to help out/scan/ encourage etc but not have to worry about how to deliver lessons. Thank you for all the hard work this must take.’

‘Just wanted to drop a note to say how fabulous parents’ evening was last night. Each session was run within a minute or two of each appointment time, with teaching staff giving key information about X’s development and her attitude towards her learning.'

‘XXX has had a fabulous return to school this term and is doing really well. I wanted to pass on this positive feedback, as people are generally quick to complain, but don’t often pass on praise.’

‘A special thank you to Y for sorting out the Portal log in and to Z in the IT department for replying and sorting an email I sent for assistance very late one night!'

‘Once again you have done a fantastic job in making the learning easy to access and enjoyable.’

‘We have actually really been honoured to be a part of your school for the past five years and feel that it has inspired X to be the best he could be, and hopefully his grades will reflect that also.

‘Although we have faced our personal challenges as a family along the way, I would like to personally thank yourself and all the supporting staff who have gone above and beyond for us to accommodate our changing needs.'

‘We just wanted to write and thank all the teachers for making X feel welcome back into St Joseph's this term. She has joined in the online learning easily and has enjoyed her first week. The dedication that the teachers have put in to get this up and running at short notice has been fantastic. Teachers have replied to any emails that we have sent very promptly.'

‘Teachers have encouraged activities to promote wellbeing, maintain relationships and keep a sense of community. Thank you - I know this won’t always have been easy and will have taken hard work and dedication from everyone. I hope you all manage to have a welldeserved rest over half term.’

‘I truly believe this period has given X the opportunity to develop different learning skills; he has shown high levels of self-motivation, independence and maturity. The teachers have all been positive and enthusiastic and he continues to make progress.'

‘(The students) all need their routine back, as I am sure you all do too. It's been lovely as I have helped in the community re vaccinations and we had some teachers, which I was so pleased about. They've done an amazing job so far - all the online teaching and support, so much appreciated and still going.

Thanks again for your lovely emails staying in touch during this lockdown’

‘We’d also like to take this opportunity to say how impressed we have been by your leadership throughout and how grateful we are that the school/community has continued to thrive through lockdown. The support and high standard of teaching is very much appreciated.’

‘Just a quick email to thank you for a brilliantly informative evening. What a fantastic use of the tech and breaking out into smaller groups was so useful. All the teachers we saw presented their subject with passion and enthusiasm which, after almost a week of on-line learning, can’t have been easy.

It was very informative and so useful. Everyone’s efforts were very much appreciated. We all really enjoyed it.’

‘As we approach half term, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for the fantastic online learning you have provided for the past six weeks.'

‘May I say last night’s Year 9 Options Evening was a huge success from our point of view. It was lovely to meet and hear from yourself, X and the Head and Deputy Head of Upper School. The evening ran to schedule and it was finished in good time.'

'All the teachers gave a great insight into their subjects.

Their passion for their area was certainly evident and we feel lucky to have a list to choose from for Y. It was also extremely useful to have had parents' eve prior to last night to assist with GCSE choices.'

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Boarding News Lent term in Boarding Across the country, families have experienced the highs and lows of more time together and the same is true for our boarding community.

For the boarding staff and students who have shared another lockdown together, we feel very much like one extended family.

Home learning takes on a different perspective when in a lockdown boardingstyle. Students have impressed staff with their flexibility and resilience in adapting to online learning. For staff supervising study sessions, it has been a privilege to have the opportunity to snatch glimpses of so many different live lessons across the year groups and subjects. We have seen detailed analytical discussions of literature, maths and language games and even a snow-based geography lesson!

The advantage of our lockdown experience has been having so much face-to-face company, but it has also presented the challenge of what to do with all our spare time on site! If you have been watching our social media posts, you will have seen we have kept busy. Miss Ward’s purchase of a massive inflatable screen and projector transformed the Goldrood games room into our very own cinema, which has been used for movies, k-pop style dance-alongs, and watching live football and rugby matches. Our Sixth Form students have also enjoyed the opportunity of booking the Goldrood ‘restaurant’, ordering in takeaways to eat in a private dining room decorated with sparkly fairy lights - a great way of celebrating our lockdown birthdays.

Our biggest celebration, organised by Mrs Rowlands, was our takeover of the Sixth Form Centre for our Chinese New Year celebration.

Being able to go to the other side of campus made us all feel like we had been ‘out’!

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Good food became more important to everyone here, as for many in lockdown. Aside from the high quality food in Refs, students have shown increasing interest in practising their own skills. There have been some impressive meals produced in the Mews kitchen that would not look out of place in a good Chinese restaurant. We have also seen tasty chocolate fridge cake and Spanish empanadas.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic response across the house was to a huge sushi-making session - the results of which were delicious!

We have also managed to use our vast outdoor spaces during lockdown, for kite flying, jogging and regular football training sessions on the Astro with our gap assistants. Perhaps the most fun of all, however, was enabled by the arrival of such heavy snow. Initially tentative students became more and more adventurous in their play, with a range of snow people appearing around the boarding area as well as a snow fort that featured in snow ball battles. These are fond memories stored away by staff and students from this time.

Whilst we have made the most of our lockdown period, the return of more students to boarding as College reopened made our community feel even more vibrant. It has been wonderful to welcome back the faces we had missed. There is certainly a spring in our step as we get back to normal business, daylight hours grow longer and trees return to green.

Dr Stimson Mews Housemistress

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Start as you mean to go on St Joseph’s College Ipswich is an independent school for ages 2 to 18, with an outstanding Nursery and Prep School.

Space to thrive

Our Nursery welcomes children from two years and offers a bright and caring environment with space to thrive and all the facilities of our 60-acre campus. Government childcare funding available. Our nurturing Prep School encourages children to reach their full potential and our forward-thinking curriculum includes Engineering, Music, Computing and Science, taught by specialist teachers and all accommodated in a building designed with little ones in mind.

To find out more contact our admissions team via admissions@stjos.co.uk | 01473 694576

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