Arnold House Spring Assembly 2016

ASSEMBLYSPRING 2016 From the Headmaster “Spring Term”, “Lent Term”, “Middle Term” - whatever you call it, this is the term that seems to be the Cinderella of the academic year. It doesn’t have the newness and expectation of the start of the year, nor the excitement and emotion of the end - in fact, it’s the term where we just get on with things. Maybe we can add to its list of names, the “Normal Term”? However that does not do justice to the huge amount that goes on and the real progress being made by boys in their academic and social development.

This edition of “Assembly” shows the range of what boys have been doing and they have worked with their usual purposefulness and determination, making the most of the huge opportunities that Arnold House offers them to develop their talents and deepen their learning.

The many spokes of the wheel of the AH experience - academic, sport, music, drama, art and good citizenship - have been in evidence this term in a way that is normal to the boys and staff, but when you stand back and consider it, one marvels at the energy and commitment they all show.

There is an Americanism that perhaps perfectly sums up this term, “normalcy” - and AH normalcy is wonderful to behold!

It was in the second half of the term that Mr Vivian Thomas took his sabbatical (dubbed by one wag as “The Vexit”); something that was timed to ensure minimum impact and it is a great testament to the good systems and clear focus we have in place that things have run smoothly in his absence. That’s not to say we don’t want him back and we look forward to his return in April to continue steering the ship, full of happy and busy passengers, in the summer term.

John Hill Acting Headmaster

Chapel Choir Concert in aid of the St John’s Hospice

Y5 Skype Lesson with the Boston Tea Party Museum

Y6 Compass Course Presentation Afternoon

Y1 House Cross Country Race

ASSEMBLY

Verse Speaking Competition Winners with Poet Inua Ellams

House Assemblies during Anti Bullying Week

Y4 Exploding Volcanoes

Pancake Races on Shrove Tuesday

Y1 Shakespeare Workshop

1st XV v St Anthony’s at the AH Rugby & Hockey Festival

Y3 performance of Robin Hood and the Sherwood Hoodies

Y3 Egyptian Project

Yellow & Blue Charity Day in aid of St John’s Hospice

The Unbeaten Colts A Hockey Team (Played 12 Won 12)

Y6 Visit to the London Transport Museum

ASSEMBLY

Y7 Trip to Paris

My recent magical musical moments …

ARNOLD HOUSE SCHOOL

A Night at the

RACES

On 10th March 2016, parents and staff gathered together for the annual bursary fundraising event.

This year, the American School was transformed into a Royal Enclosure fit for Ascot as all the guests enjoyed betting on one of the many creatively named sponsored horses and races. Throughout ASSEMBLY

the evening much bidding took place on the large variety of auction items that had been so kindly donated by the Arnold House community.

Overall, the evening raised £28,000 for the School’s Bursary Fund which will be used to support our next intake of bursary boys in September.

We would like to thank everyone for their continuing support of the Bursary Scheme and the Board of Friends and Bursary Ambassadors for all their help in putting together a fun and memorable evening.

Stephanie Miller Director of Development

Music Hitting High Notes at Arnold House I am incredibly fortunate to work in a school where music is such an integral part of daily life. Singing in particular is an important part of the Christian ethos of the school and I was impressed upon joining Arnold House that the boys have daily hymn singing, with a carefully selected repertoire chosen by the Deputy Headmaster Academic.

The musical opportunities at Arnold House really are quite staggering and there are few prep schools (and in some cases senior schools) that can boast such talented musicians and such an array of musical activities to take part in.

Music is beneficial to our boys in a variety of ways: it encourages creativity; working as part of a team; boosts confidence and selfesteem and regular practice also improves self-discipline. The most important factor for me is seeing the enjoyment that our boys get from their many musical experiences at Arnold House.

We are privileged to have excellent music facilities for a school of our size. We have five practice rooms appropriately named after some of the most celebrated musicians: Glass, Coltrane, Chopin, Mozart and Palestrina. A large music classroom with a suite of ten Apple Mac computers and most recently we have purchased two beautiful new W. Hoffmann upright pianos, with funds generously donated by current parents and the Parents’ Association.

Having these wonderful facilities makes it possible for us to hire visiting music

teachers of the highest calibre. We currently have eleven instrumental teachers who all work in different areas of the music industry including: the West End, the BBC concert orchestra, the opera world, string ensembles, bands and composing. Learning from such experienced musicians is truly inspiring for the boys and it is clear from our termly ABRSM exam results that the teaching and learning is of a very high standard. Several of our boys have been awarded music scholarships at their senior school destinations and this is something of which we are very proud.

Teaching music at Arnold House is immensely rewarding and the flexibility of the music curriculum allows me to introduce boys to many different genres of music ranging from Mediaeval chants through to the latest chart releases. An exciting part of the music curriculum takes place in Year 7 when boys are introduced to music technology. They learn how to compose and arrange music using Garage Band software and study topics such as film music, remixing and most recently sampling which has been quite a hit with Year 8!

We currently have twenty-three (!) extracurricular music clubs that take place before and after school and also during break times. These clubs range from classical string groups through to the rockiest of rock bands with an impressive selection of choirs, ukuleles, and woodwind and brass groups in the mix. The groups are open to boys in Years 2-8 and there is something to suit all abilities and musical preferences.

As a singer one of my favourite parts of the job is directing choirs. One of the things I wondered when joining Arnold House was whether the boys would sing and if not would I have a battle on my hands trying to get them to do so? With sixty-three boys in Junior Choir, forty in Senior Choir and twenty-five in Chapel Choir I think it is safe to say that our boys love to sing. Seeing the enthusiasm on their faces and their eagerness to learn new repertoire and perform with their friends is really quite encouraging. The boys get to showcase their musical talents in the Informal, Christmas, Chapel Choir and Summer Concerts, which are all important events in the school calendar.

ASSEMBLY

My recent magical musical moments . . .

Junior Choir singing ‘Feelin’ Hot, Hot Hot’ at 8am on a miserable February morning – if that can’t wake you up nothing will!

their Senior Choir – Channelling in some ing ow thr and inner pop star ot fabulous harmonies to bo

Chapel Choir – For their stunning per formance of Boyd’s Agnus Dei at the Ash Wednesday service a run for Year 6 – For giving Bob Dylan ances form per s clas ir the in his money of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’

Ukulele club – for entertaining me on a Wednesday morning with their sunny strumming – George Formby eat your heart out!

Senior Orchestra – For being generally fabulous Moments like these make me feel truly lucky to work in such a wonderful school with such amazing pupils and staff.

Lydia Dupont Director of Music

Interview with Old Boy Paul Rubens (AH 1970-78) people who were going to do the Westminster entrance exam.

After Westminster I had a gap year which I spent in Canada working at a school and travelling around the West Coast of the USA and then went to Bristol University to study economics and philosophy.

After university I worked in a merchant bank in the City for a few years before deciding to quit that job and travel the world. After 6 months in Burma and Indonesia I ended up in Australia where I got a job working for a circus and funfair.

Over in Australia I also met a Dutch girl who I married, and then came back to England with little idea about what to do for a job.

But one thing I learned at Arnold House in St Patrick’s - the first classroom I went into - was how to write. And using that I somehow I got a job writing for a magazine publisher, and ended up getting a job as a journalist at the Sunday Times.

What have you done since leaving Arnold House?

Like about half of the boys that left AH in 1978, I went on to Westminster School. In fact so many people were heading to Westminster back then that there was a special class, 6W, for

ASSEMBLY

A little later I moved to New Zealand for three years working as a reporter on a newspaper called The Dominion in the capital, Wellington, before finally returning to England for good in 1998. After the open space of New Zealand I didn’t fancy living in London any more so now I live near Marlow on Thames in the middle of nowhere.

For the last eighteen years I have been working as a freelance journalist writing technology stories for the BBC and various newspapers, and I am also the editor of a pinball magazine called Pavlov Pinball (www. pavlovpinball.com)

What are your overriding memories of Arnold House?

I loved every minute of my time at Arnold House, although I still find it strange that we had to call all the female teachers “Sir.” Life seemed to revolve around crazes that swept through the school every year or so, like Itty Bittys (rubber creatures that you stuck on the end of pencils) or Top Trumps cards, and towards the end came technological marvels like the first digital watches and the first pocket calculators.

In fact the pocket calculator was invented just in time for me to avoid having to get taught to use a slide rule by Mr Williams the senior maths teacher. Slide rules were heavy wooden devices that let you do simple calculations.

Great moments at Arnold House included everyone in the changing rooms at Canons Park chanting “It’s just not on” - which was a phrase that a new teacher called Mr Vaughan once used and which was immediately adopted by the everyone in the 6th form for some reason.

duplicator - a strange contraption that produced purple and white copies that stank of some evil smelling chemical. If the teacher distributed these copies the classroom would stink for days afterwards.

The food was pretty terrible, but eating it was compulsory: the only choice you had was whether to ask for a “small” or “ordinary” - and then you had to eat it all.

AH Sports Day 1978 200m Final L to R: Michael Goodman (Pitt), Paul Rubens (Nelson), Owen Keane, (Nelson)

And the time in St David’s classroom aged about 7 when Anthony Stockil misunderstood a request from the teacher to put our exercise books in the storage bin at the back of the class and took them outside and threw them all in the dustbins. I’ll never forget the next day when Mrs Tara, the formidable form teacher, asked Stockil where the exercise books were and he had to admit what he had done with them. Mrs Tara was apoplectic, much to our amusement, but Stockil became a folk hero, and in fact I am still in contact with him today.

And I am sure everyone who was at Arnold House in the mid 1970s remembers Ivy, the slightly eccentric Geordie dinner lady who used to come around with a cloth to wipe the tables after lunch when we had a 10 minute book reading session. She would come around shouting “lift yer booooks” and if you were too slow you got your face wiped with the cleaning cloth.

What was Arnold House like in the 70s?

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, Arnold House in the 70s was a pretty crazy place compared to the primary school my children went to thirty years later. There were still some old teachers who were stuck in the 1940s and 1950s who weren’t above hurling a blackboard cleaner at you.

But the younger teachers were products of the swinging 60s, so as well as strict old matrons there were teachers who smoked pipes, cigars and cigarettes in class, and wore purple jackets, orange shirts, long hair and beards and other hippy chic.

For some reason the school didn’t possess a photocopying machine back then - maybe they hadn’t been invented yet. So whenever a teacher wanted to produce a handout of any kind they had to use the school’s stencil

For a treat we occasionally got chocolate sponge with gloopy chocolate sauce, but more often we got the dreaded tapioca.

The facilities were pretty basic too - the science lab was a prefab hut in the playground, as was the 3rd Form, and the annual high jump competition was a painful affair as all that was provided for a soft landing was a pile of sand.

But around the middle of my time at Arnold House the American School in London over the road started letting us use their gym, their theatre, and even their thick soft crash mats for the high jump. I still remember the awe we had of the place - particularly because they had a coke vending machine in the reception area. (Sweets and fizzy drinks were strictly forbidden at Arnold House at the time and anyone with sweets in their pocket faced detention.)

How has being an Arnold House pupil impacted your life?

For some reason languages - Latin and French - were taken very seriously and we started learning French in particular from the age of 7 in St David’s with Mrs Tara. She used an old reel to reel tape machine to play us a “learn to speak French” course called “Langue des Français”, with printed handouts to accompany it. Even though there weren’t any teachers who were native French speakers it was taught really well and I ended up liking learning foreign languages. That’s been quite handy what with having a Dutch wife and having to learn that particularly strange tongue, which I now speak very badly.

What was your favourite subject at School and why?

My favourite subject was geography. The reason was simple: I had no interest in the subject but it was taught by a huge hairy bearded biker called Mr Everett who had travelled around Australia on an enormous motorbike before taking a job at Arnold House.

Many of his lessons consisted of him showing us slide shows of his travels - somehow made relevant to the curriculum, and telling us tall tales about snakes, heat so intense that he could fry eggs on the seat of his motorbike and so on. It was probably thanks to him that I

ended up working in Australia ten years later.

Have you stayed in touch with any of your fellow pupils?

I started at Arnold House at the same time as another five year old called Rupert Widdicombe, and he also went on to Westminster School and then to Bristol University with me. He then became a journalist too, so we have led a parallel life, and we still see each other occasionally today.

There are plenty of others, like Anthony Stockil, David Taylor, Nicky Geber, Constantin von Moltke who I see or hear from from time to time.

What has been your greatest achievement?

John F Kennedy once said “We do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” That explains why you see a lot of middle aged men cycling up mountains, and back in 2008 I cycled up three mountains in France as part of a 120 mile cycling event called the Etape du Tour. That was the hardest thing I have ever done, so I’m going to say that that was my biggest achievement.

Describe an average day in your role?

As a tech journalist I have to think of stories to write - and the subject could be anything from artificial intelligence to hacker gangs to some new gadget. Then I have to try to become an instant expert on the subject, usually doing research on the Internet. After that I have to track down some real experts (or hackers) to interview, and then write it all up into an interesting story.

So an average day involves learning new stuff, a bit of detective work to track down the best people to talk to, an hour or two on the phone asking questions and writing notes, and then the actual writing - which is my least favourite part of the job.

And somewhere in all that I have to find the time to walk Jelly, our Golden Retriever, who keeps me company in my home office while my wife is out working and children are at school.

What advice would you give someone who would like to follow in your footsteps and pursue a career in journalism?

Don’t forget that the biggest challenge for editors is finding stuff to fill their pages with, so if you come to them with an interesting story idea then there’s a good chance they’ll ask you to write it for them.

So if you want to be a journalist, call up a publication and pitch an idea about something you find interesting. Once you get the first piece published the next one is easy - and then it’s only a matter of time before someone offers you a job as a journalist.

Anything else you would like to add?

I urge everyone to seek out and play pinball!

Arnold House School 1 Loudoun Road, St. John’s Wood, London NW8 0LH Telephone: 020 7266 4840 Email: office@arnoldhouse.co.uk Website: www.arnoldhouse.co.uk Arnold House School Ltd (Limited by Guarantee). Registered in London Number 889424. Educational Charitable Trust Number 312725

ASSEMBLY