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THE BIANNUAL DIGEST OF IDEAS, OPINION AND ORIGINAL THOUGHT

Alleyn’s On Magazine Focus: AI and the New Now Issue 01 Summer 2023

Photo by Nathan Duck on Unsplash

Articles Include: p.10 ChatGPT, Hard Thought and the Advent of Flipped Learning, by Jane Lunnon | p.14 Meaning and the Mind in the Age of AI, by

Andy Skinnard | p.26 Combatting Misogynistic Ideology, by Will Howell-Harte | p.34 Diversity in Literature, by Alexandra Smith p.38 A Shrine to Reading, by Katherine Beith | p.44 Marginal Gains of Classroom Design, by Guy Collins-Down

Artist: Bonnie Taborn, Year 12 Alleyn’s Summer Show, 2023

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Alleyn’s On Acknowledgements Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this edition of Alleyn’s On. While there are too many of you to mention individually, you have undoubtedly helped Alleyn’s On sing with the authentic voices of the entire Alleyn’s community, on the many real issues of our day. We are very grateful. Please do pass on or recycle this magazine once you have finished it. Editorial Team

Melanie Huntley, Editor Guy Collins-Down Andy Homden, Consilium Education

The Graphic Design House www.tgdh.co.uk

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international@alleyns.org.uk

Channels @AlleynsSchool @AlleynsSchool /AlleynsSchool /school/AlleynsSchool www.alleyns.org.uk

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Alleyn’s On Summer 2023

A Moment to Pause, Reflect, Share In a target-driven and time-hungry world, it might seem odd to invite a group of very busy people to pause and write about any aspect of their professional life that they think is worth sharing.

nd yet, this is what happened at Alleyn’s this year. As a School that fizzes with energy and ideas, with ambition and enterprise, we thought it would be fascinating to invite staff to write about experiences, initiatives or issues that were important to them. And, crucially, to share those thoughts with the outside world. We believed that this might be an opportunity for more of what makes Alleyn’s such a special place to come to the surface. We were not quite sure what would emerge – but so much the better! And we were not disappointed. Alleyn’s On has emerged bubbling with promise; a carefully curated collection of voices making themselves heard on topics of personal, social, and indeed, global importance.

Whether writing down ideas, sharing our experiences or leading debates, making our voices heard is a key part of who we are as an organisation; helping us to provoke thought and enabling our people to become all they can be.

Ideas and experiences, communicated well, are simpy irresistible.

And, when staff at a dynamic and leading co-educational school like Alleyn’s pause to reflect on its intellectual wealth, and to share what is important to them, the ultimate beneficiaries are the pupils. The fact is, ideas and experiences communicated well are simply irrepressible. We very much hope you enjoy this inaugural edition of Alleyn’s On with its focus on AI and the New Now – do let us know what you think! With warm wishes, The Alleyn’s On team

Image left Artist: Jasmine Miller, Year 12 Alleyn’s Summer Show 2023

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Alleyn’s On Summer 2023

Contents 04

Acknowledgements

Editorial Leader

Contents

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION

Jane Lunnon ChatGPT, Hard Thought and the Advent of Flipped Learning

Andy Skinnard Meaning and the Mind in the Age of AI

Aidan Sproat-Clements How Will the West Be Won?

Guy Collins-Down Ready Player None

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EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Will Howell-Harte Combatting Misogynistic Ideology

Dorcas Maxwell Standing Against Sexism

Alexandra Smith Diversity in Literature

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LEARNING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Katherine Beith A Shrine to Reading

Shomit Dutta Stumped: Two Great Playwrights, One Great Game

Guy Collins-Down Marginal Gains of Classroom Design

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Alleyn’s On Summer 2023

TRAVEL AND NEW PERSPECTIVES

Nolan Price The New Now

Joel Stewart A Catalyst for Change

Dr Rob Atkinson In Your Element

Gavin English The Great and the Good

Ben Jones Pillars of Partnership

Now

Now Read This!

Alleyn’s Now is our call to action for all our community to make positive choices to help protect our planet. Where physically distributed, Alleyn’s On is printed on Essential Offset 140gsm (cover) and 100gsm (interior pages). Please pass on or recycle this magazine once you’ve finished it.

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Published on February 5, 2023 SONY, ILCE-6500 Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

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Jane Lunnon Lent 2023

ChatGPT, Hard Thought and the Advent of Flipped Learning 10.01. There was something pleasingly binary about the date on which Head of Alleyn’s, Jane Lunnon and the Alleyn’s Senior Leadership Team first experimented with this year’s defining AI phenomenon, ChatGPT. (The GPT stands for the infinitely forgettable: Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.)

hen Alleyn’s biology teacher and ‘earlyadopter’ Dr Greetham advised us to try it, he promised that we wouldn’t be disappointed. And he was right. It was immediately apparent to us that ChatGPT offered something completely different in AI support. Something that had the potential to change education forever. Whilst AI help with learning has been available in education for a good number of years, the seismic, gamechanging thing about this software is both its plausibility — how it responds, seamlessly, in natural language, if necessary mirroring the voice of the questioner in the answers it provides — and its scope. Even in January — its relative infancy — it was able to answer pretty much any query you could throw at it. (When I invited it to write a start of term letter for parents, it really made quite a good fist of it, give or take a few Americanisms and the odd cliché. I promise that I did not use it, but how amazing that it was even a possibility!). Since then, the scale of interaction with ChatGPT across the world, and the speed it can learn, has meant its output has become increasingly refined, and increasingly convincing. So, 10.01. felt like something of a

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‘moment’ as we started to reflect on the possibilities of this software and its implications for learning, for assessment, for the whole business of education in schools. At first glance, the potential for ChatGPT seemed to us limitless, almost unknowable in its reach and uses, but it was clear to us that we needed to understand this fastevolving product quickly in order to harness it. In fact, like many, we were relatively late to the party. ChatGPT was launched in November 2022 by

What does it mean to be human? OpenAI, an organisation founded in 2015 (by Elon Musk amongst others), in order to develop AI for the benefit of humanity. Five days after it had been launched, it had garnered more than a million users. Apparently, it took Meta ten months and Netflix three years, to do the same! And no wonder. Since ChatGPT and other recently released AI platforms including Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Copilot have hit the airwaves (I suspect that metaphor is quaintly anachronistic), people have been posting in astonishment and disbelief about the range and scale of their offerings. Whether it’s a

board report, a complete essay, an application letter, a lesson plan, the answers to your maths homework, coding in a range of languages or — as Drake and The Weeknd found to their displeasure — a pastiche of your favourite singer, this year’s harvest of AI technologies will confidently and courteously oblige. The range and scope of their ability to imitate human endeavour have been mind-boggling to many — one American college student who asked it to resolve his research paper difficulties declared in a December tweet: “we are witnessing the death of the college essay in realtime.” And perhaps that is true. Early this year, our Head of English at Alleyn’s ran a blind marking test with the English department. One of the essays submitted was provided by ChatGPT – it scored 34 marks (out of a possible 40). So, it can produce Grade 8 (or A* in old money) standard work, at least up to GCSE level. And because all you have to do is simply ask it — the interface is incredibly straightforward and no longer requires key words or pre-planning — its temptations for those looking for swift, easy answers, are very clear to see. But of course, great education — or even, moderately good education — is not, and has never been, about the speedy provision of easy solutions. Our job as educators is to teach our pupils how to think. How to use their own minds, their developing skills and talents, their growing knowledge, their ability to research, their judgement and capacity for discrimination, to arrive at possible solutions to the

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various problems presented to them. The fact that some of those answers are wrong is precisely the point. School is where we learn what to do and how to do it. It’s also where we learn what not to do. What doesn’t work. How to get things wrong and how to deal with that. We all know how important it is to learn to fail. To be comfortable with failing… as Samuel Beckett so elegantly pointed out: “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better!” One of my biggest concerns about AI software, no matter how sophisticated, is that it might insulate our pupils from the realities of learning through failure. I’ll never forget getting a D in my Maths homework when I was 11. I couldn’t quite believe that I had got such a grade. Or even, that such a grade existed. But that moment, tough though it seemed at the time, was, in fact, seminal. The world didn’t end. I worked out what to do next. I spoke to my teacher. I did better the next time. And I found a way of recognising and being comfortable with what I was good at and what I would always need to work at…I learned to accept that. To love it, actually, as a reflection of what it is to be alive and to be young and to be a learning, imperfect, interesting human! Thinking, learning, being educated, is not just about repetition and parroting things off and gathering information from massive data sets. It’s about emotion and character and social interaction and creativity and all the things that these AI systems have not (yet) found a way to replicate. That’s education — and ChatGPT doesn’t have any truck with it. So, it may have been “trained” through a machine learning technique called RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), and through accessing a massive amount of data online, but it can’t actually think, nor does it know when, or if, it has got

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things wrong. There was a lovely moment in a test a journalist ran in Berlin, where its answer to: “which mammal lays the biggest egg?” was: “the elephant”. And it would seem that Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, agrees — telling students in Tokyo in June that AI will “revolutionise education as calculators did years ago, without actually replacing learning”. So, where does it leave us at Alleyn’s as we — pupils and staff — continue to embrace this technology enthusiastically? Well, it’s exciting for sure. There may be limitations, but there are opportunities here too. We are already saving time through this technology — in the administrative processes of our school, if not necessarily, in all the educational work. Equally, confronting something that feels seminal, that feels like a paradigm shift, is always thrilling. It requires careful reflection about what we should be asking our pupils to do in school and in class and what they can do at home. We will see more flipped learning in the coming months and years, as diagnostic assessment (what you have understood and at what level), moves more frequently into the classroom and preparation for the lesson (read this, assimilate, come with questions) moves into homework. Flipped learning has been something of a holy grail for schools for a while, so this would be an exciting development. I also think that whilst we can let AI do the heavy lifting on the low-level, information gathering, summarising work, there will always be a premium on higher order, reflective and hard thought. If the exam boards have to find ways around AI generated coursework responses, their solution will need to be more rigorous expectations around original thought and detailed, rich analysis of problems. That feels inspiring. This year’s phenomenon has left

us as humanity grappling with the uncertainties of what AI systems will be able to do for us in the future, and whether there will be a role for our species at all. The reality is that the technology available to us today will be the most primitive that our pupils will use in their lifetimes — and already this technology is opening up questions that will need to be answered. What is learning? What does it mean to be educated? Perhaps, above all, what does it mean to be human? ChatGPT’s answer to that (see below), doesn’t even come close! And there is great comfort in that! Below, ChatGPT’s response to the question: “what does it mean to be human?” Being human refers to the characteristics and qualities that define the species Homo sapiens. These include the ability to think, feel, and communicate, as well as having a complex nervous system and the capacity for self-awareness and introspection. Additionally, humans have a unique capacity for cultural and societal development, and the ability to create and use tools. The concept of what it means to be human is also deeply rooted in philosophical, religious, and cultural beliefs, and can be interpreted in many different ways.

Jane Lunnon is Head at Alleyn's School and the author of "The State of Independence" (2nd edition published February 2023). Jane is Chair of the Teenage Mental Health Commission and a Trustee of the Royal National Springboard Children's Foundation. An earlier version of this article was originally published in January 2023.

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Published on June 20, 2022 Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash

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Andy Skinnard Trinity 2023

Meaning and the Mind in the Age of AI Alleyn’s Senior Deputy Head Andy W.A. Skinnard takes on intelligence, interaction and intentionality as he reviews the argument for the existence of schools.

he question of what intelligence is, and the meaning of its linked terms ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ remains the hardest of the problems of philosophy. Just ask yourself, “what is a mind?”, “how is it that I can lift my right arm, just after having the thought to do it?”, or “why do I picture the world like this, and does my friend picture it like I do?” The histories of Eastern and Western philosophy depict thinkers wrestling with a way of understanding how we know things and how our individual interpretation of the world can possibly help us debate it with others. This, of course, is also the challenge for a learner and a teacher – not the specific philosophical battle, but the attempt to explore concepts in language in a shared space. Just how can language aid a shared project in understanding a world we can access, debate, agree and disagree on? A classic answer to these questions was to regard our physical and intellectual worlds as separate ones, even if they are joined in some (mysterious) way. The mind provided a continuity that the physical world never had, given our constant growth (then deterioration) over time. And it was the mind that, after a sort,

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hovered over the body to control its movements (or lingered within, like a ghost in the machine as one thinker put it) and would – then – provide the chance for some form of continuity after the body’s death. In this we see the traditional view of the human constitution shared by major religions of the West and East.

Intelligence is the hardest of the problems of philosophy. Whatever the prospect of understanding the strange relationship between the intellectual and the physical aspects of human life, one area that has received great attention in all of this, and which is particularly pertinent right now, is what human intelligence actually is. A contribution to the understanding of human intelligence, and a potential challenge to its uniqueness, have been the claims of rising mechanical ‘intelligence’ afforded

by the development of the microchip computer, especially since the 1980s. In the 1980s the philosopher John Searle gave the Reith Lectures in the annual BBC Radio 4 series. These lectures contained an arresting example of what Searle attested was the difference between human intelligence and computer ‘intelligence’. Imagine you are situated in a small hut and the hut has a post box on one wall and a post box on the opposite wall. You are told that you will receive a question written in Chinese (you only speak English) on a tablet posted through one post box. What you have to do is receive the tablet then check the other tablets hanging inside the hut for they will expose which is the correct tablet to send out of the opposite post box as the right answer. Each time you provide the questioner outside the hut with the correct answer. And, as you might imagine from the Turing test of a computer’s ability to imitate human intelligence, the person who has sent in the questions thinks you can speak Chinese. You cannot. You can, however, follow a formal instruction and thereby (thanks to the priorplaced tablets from a real Chinese speaker) give the impression of intelligent Chinese language ability. Searle showed the difference between the ability of a formal system like the hut to imitate the syntax of language – its rules, grammar and vocabulary. But what you could not do in that hut was engage in

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any semantics, knowing the meaning and import of the answers you were providing. Indeed, you didn’t even know the words! Searle compares a sophisticated microchip computer with any computer of the past – like, say, a clock. The clock is simply a computer with the limited programme of timetelling. The clock does not know the time. It does not mean to tell the time, but depending on the programming of its clockmaker, it can provide chronological ‘intelligence’ to its users. The machine and human ‘intelligence’ gap could perhaps best be expressed by the human capability of intentionality. We humans intend things with our knowledge of the world around us. We use it in the service of argument, personal progress, love, enjoyment, destruction of enemies. We hold a first-hand mapping ability of the world around us which AI does not yet have. Our knowledge maps the actual world thanks to the human constitution

of the senses and the organic brain. The psychologist Stephen Pinker begins his course at Harvard with a challenge to students to ask a question that AI could not answer. He says it is getting harder to find those questions, but he says that AI cannot

A clock does not know the time. yet tell you that a person who was alive at 9am and at 11am, was also alive at 10am. Nonetheless, he thinks the extraordinary weight of data now being managed by AI can offer a glimpse that some intelligence of what the content of the data comprises is there in the shadow of all those bytes. But it is not knowing in the human sense.

We need each other to deploy language as a human tool – nobody can invent a private language. Human intelligence is predicated on human interaction, intentionality and an ability to experience meaning in thoughts that, whilst private, can be expressed in language, poetry, music, art and perhaps reasoned argument. This, then, is why we need schools.

Andy Skinnard is Senior Deputy Head at Alleyn’s School. Andy has a particular passion for and long-held expertise in the development and provision of exceptional pastoral care. He is an International Baccalaureate examination writer in philosophy and a practising inspector for the UK Independent Schools Inspectorate body.

Alleyn’s Advertisement Alleyn’s Green Scene is an online publication that encapsulates the sustainability efforts and incredible initiatives that the Alleyn’s community is working on. In this edition, be inspired by our young activists in Eco Committee and Environment society, who employ the tireless energy of youth to develop their endeavours on behalf of our planet.

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Published on September 29, 2022 Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash

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Photo by Alek Kalinowski on Unsplash Published on July 23, 2020 SONY, ILCE-6300

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Aidan Sproat-Clements Trinity 2023

How Will the West Be Won? Taking in the Wild West and a visit to the deck of the great Starship Enterprise, Assistant Head (Director of Studies) Aidan Sproat-Clements expounds the virtues of collaborative working to explore, digest and advise on AI and the frontiers of the new modern wilderness.

ere’s been plenty written over the last few months about AI, not just around ChatGPT, but also more generally around the various other manifestations of artificial intelligence that are starting to influence our lives more and more — graphics and video creation, adaptive learning platforms, and of course self-driving cars. The OECD describes ‘frontier technology’ as technology that will reshape industry and communications and which could provide solutions to global challenges such as climate change, noting also that they have the potential to displace existing processes. It’s pretty easy to see that AI fits into this category, with its golden promise of automating many aspects of our lives. But what, precisely, will this AI revolution disrupt? Is it the end of marking? Of essays? Will chatbots replace teachers? Lawyers? Copywriters? Will the power to create imagery on platforms such as Midjourney or DALL.E make artists and photographers redundant? What imagery does the idea of a frontier conjure up? Thoughts, perhaps, of Davy Crockett, resplendent in a raccoon-fur hat and toiling to bring order to barelycharted territory. Or of a deep-faked video of Captain Kirk, aboard the

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deck of the Enterprise, daring us to boldly split infinitives where no infinitives have been split before. But what happens next in any episode of Star Trek is of course that the Enterprise finds itself in some sort of scrape, perhaps because of the unintended consequences of their actions, or because some technology or mysterious creation has been left unchecked and has spiralled out of control.

Let’s prepare pupils to engage with frontier technology. Star Trek may be the archetypal Space Western, but journalists, lawyers, educators have all described the new land of AI as a ‘wild west’ — a lawless, uncharted territory where the potential for extraordinary riches and reward lurks side by side with both natural hazards and ruthless bandits. So how do we navigate safely through the wilderness? How do we avoid the cacti and the outlaws? And more

importantly — as educators — how do we help prepare our pupils to engage with the opportunities that this frontier territory no doubt offers. Let’s not forget — the OECD singles out the potential to solve global challenges as a key property of frontier tech. There’s no option for us simply to ignore it — we need to master it. So in a untamed but fecund environment, security comes from a number of potential sources. The key avenues are legislation, domestication and community. From the legislative angle, the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has submitted a white paper on “a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation”. It aims to drive growth and prosperity, build public trust, and foster innovation. However, it aims to do so in a manner that is minimal in terms of legislation and this has inevitably attracted criticism from some who feel that it is too ‘light-touch’, and who contrast it with the European Union’s position which is more heavily regulatory and which focuses on ethics and public interest. There is a widely held belief that legislation — of some variety — will be needed, and that the tech companies themselves can not necessarily be relied upon to self-regulate — who can forget the Cambridge Analytica data scandal? The domestication of an online landscape is a more organic process. Just as we might endeavour

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to gently tame the natural landscape – thank you, Captain Kirk – by feedback from human processes, digital environments undergo similar transitions. As individual actors (households, students, educators, businesses) interact with a wide range of AI service providers, their choices and economic feedback sculpt the provision that those companies and agencies offer. Demand for, say, online tutoring services would lead to greater investment in those areas; successful products will grow and unsuccessful or unreliable ones will wither. The wildness of the online space becomes diminished as trusted partners grow in their popularity and occupy a larger subsection of the online domain. We see this happening in the growth over time of sites such as Amazon, Google, or Wikipedia; in different ways, each has colonized a tract of virtual land by responding to user input and delivering a reliable product. In the world of AI, the winners will be those providers whose services are secure and affordable, easy-to-use and relevant. American scholar Dr Nancy Baym further breaks down the process of domestication theory into three stages: euphoria, moral panic, and domestication. I think most people will certainly recognise the first two in the global response to AI over the last year; domestication will surely follow. What role do we play in steering that process? What digital crops will we seed? And finally, what of community? Through the mid-nineteenth century, wagon trains offered the safest way for pioneers to cross the American West. Shared resources, transferred knowledge, well-trodden paths, a willingness to band together for a common goal — these were all key benefits for those who joined forces to travel to pastures new. The education sector has already demonstrated itself to be adaptable

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and collaborative with regard to technology. The arrival of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns thrust schools into difficult and unfamiliar environments. Hundreds of thousands of teachers around the world found themselves navigating, for the first time, through digital spaces and the challenges of teaching therein. Teams, Zoom, Google Classroom; online assignments, online marking, online invigilation. The global teaching community banded together during this period to share resources, best practice, and support. Across nations and sectors, people shared freely their expertise and worked collaboratively to signpost the perils of online learning and provide solutions. The same collaborative response has risen to manage the euphoria and moral panic that surrounds AI. For example, the

What digital crops will we seed? Facebook group “ChatGPT for Teachers” has nearly two hundred thousand members, and in the last month has seen over a thousand posts. People are curating online resources; they are creating tools. Some are commercial, though many are free. This international community of educators is doing what teachers have always done: they are rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in. In doing so, they believe that they will be able to find new and better techniques which, ultimately, will be of benefit to their pupils. It is in this spirit that Alleyn’s is joining with other stakeholders across the education sector to explore, discuss, digest and advise. We do not pretend to have all the answers. We may not even yet have all the questions. But we are determined to work collaboratively,

for the benefit of all, to help make this modern wilderness a safer and more navigable space where prosperity and opportunity will flourish. In doing so, we will help to establish the role of human intelligence within the rise of artificial intelligence, and will better educate our charges to understand their awesome potential and the role that they will play in a fast-changing world. In The Ultimate Computer (1970), the Enterprise crew have been testing an advanced AI-based control system which might signal their own redundancy. Kirk asks, “Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive. Might even be practical.” But Spock, ever sage, replies, “Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants; but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.” AI hasn’t yet cracked our human qualities of loyalty, service, kindness, or care. Nurturing emotionally intelligent children with a sense of morality will remain, I think, the preserve of human intelligence — and it is a great reassurance to see that teachers everywhere continue to pull together in the pursuit of this goal.

Aidan Sproat-Clements is Assistant Head (Director of Studies) at Alleyn’s School. Aidan is a maths teacher who has written textbooks and helped the International Baccalaureate to develop electronic examinations. He has a passion for developing the ways in which we inspire our learning community - teachers, pupils and parents alike.

Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Published on November 24, 2018 Canon, EOS 5D Mark II Photo by Nathan Duck on Unsplash

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Published on August 18, 2017 SONY, ILCE-7RM2 Photo by Drew Dizzy Graham on Unsplash

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Guy Collins-Down Trinity 2023

Ready Player None? The advent of AI is the story of the moment. We are glimpsing a myriad of possibilities; exciting opportunities and important challenges. Alleyn’s Chief Operating Officer Guy Collins-Down takes us on a spin through cultural perspectives and asks, why don’t we take the plunge?

Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, wrote an open letter to open AI creators to ask them to pause development, stating:

ou would have to be walking blindfolded with noise cancelling headphones or living in a cave as a hermit not to have heard of all things going on with the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) right now. The advent of the open-source platform ChatGPT in late 2022 was a singular tipping point and the sector is now in a spin as to what is in store, or quickly trying to profit from it by looking like the so called ‘experts’ in AI; running conferences, online seminars and other such promotions. But, in reality, do any of us really know what AI is, or what it will do to our society?

greeter asks him how the khakis he bought last week were working out. Are we at all surprised, therefore, by all the tailored marketing we see out there today, based on our browsing habits, and dare I say it, upon conversations which our various devices potentially listen to?

“AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.”

The entertainment industry has often been eerily accurate in predicting the future. Think the 2002 Tom Cruise classic Minority Report. In this movie they use humans with precognition abilities (pre-cogs) to predict and eradicate crime. A little far-fetched at the time (however, could those precogs now be considered AI…?), but they did show Cruise’s character, Chief John Anderton, having to get new eyeballs (yes folks) as all the marketing hoardings in the movie changed throughout, tailoring to individuals to the point where Anderton walks into the The Gap clothing store and a holographic

However, why is it that there is often a leap to doom and gloom? Why are so many thinking that AI is going to mirror the Matrix, and that we are all going to be living in an AI-created computer programme that we aren’t aware of? The term Luddite comes from the 19th century oath-based organisation of textile workers who went around destroying textile machines in fear they were losing their roles in industry. Recent articles have predicted AI will wipe out as many as 300 million jobs, so are we going to start destroying computers next? It is quite telling that major tech and AI figures, including

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Don’t be in denial or despair. It’s time to engage.

One wonders whether this was an act of self-preservation as their significant role in our lives could diminish in a heartbeat (as ChatGPT is OpenAI). In fact, some might even argue that the authors seem like the Luddites of our age now ironically. Society has always been through mass periods of change; the renaissance, agrarian revolution, industrial revolution, and now the technological revolution. To say that the computer that took the American lunar module Apollo to the moon is no more powerful than one of today’s scientific calculators just underlines how far we have come. So, what are we worried about, haven’t we been here as a society before? The French philosopher Michel Foucault introduced the concept of Panopticism to us back in 1975 as a basis of internal surveillance. He did this through his study of prisons and their design to ensure that one guard could supervise many (and is reportedly the reason why so many

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of our Victorian prisons are designed the way they are). We are now living in what is classed as the ‘superpanopticon’ where there is more surveillance of almost everything we do, from the way we shop (data collection is the reason the loyalty card was actually invented) to our online click habits. Data is the new currency. So will AI be any different, or is it the ultimate form of surveillance? So, avoiding doom and gloom, what are the exciting possibilities? - Automation: One of the early benefits of AI is the potential to automate tasks. Look at what you and your organisation undertake on a daily basis. Microsoft Power Automate allows you to do so much already, but who knows how to write the rules? AI does. - Personalisation: What if AI knew how you worked, and who you worked best with? This tech is already benefiting some students, so why shouldn’t we use it to help provide a personalised curriculum? - Content Generation: Why spend time generating exemplar answers, or sample essays to critique, when AI can do that for you - or at least do the legwork. So, what comes next? Here’s a few low-risk ways that you could explore opportunities AI may bring: 1. Review in your organisation what processes might be easy to automate. 2. Choose small groups of students and teachers and actively encourage them to try AI tools for defined tasks and projects, and feed the learnings back to others.

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3. Create a curriculum group to analyse what parts of your curriculum could use AI to boost the associated teaching resources. 4. Always review the outcomes and iterate – this approach will help you gain a nuanced understanding that you can then share with others. 5. Don’t be afraid. This is new territory for everyone and, as my colleague writes elsewhere in this publication, we are already seeing cross-sector working parties being proactively established to help map it.

It’s time to engage with AI. You have to be in the game to win it. I tend to be a glass half-full guy. If the world can come together in ten months and create a vaccine for Covid-19, what could we do when taking a challenge on like a cure for cancer with the help of AI? And what, for instance, might AI do to help run the millions of permutations of analysis? Yes, there are certainly moral issues and other protocols to consider, and I do think there needs to be some regulation out there. But the benefits of AI are already here to see, and wouldn’t it be great if this moment were to usher in a more open-source era for human development?

Back to those movies. One of my recent favourites has to be Stephen Spielberg’s Ready Player One. In this movie, the equivalent of Activision creates The Oasis, an immersive virtual universe in which humans can simulate all types of adventures, but can also be exploited or even enslaved if they can’t afford their habits. There are VR goggles, haptic suits, online marketplaces, and avatars all with eminently possible scenarios for our near future. The world outside has become a fallen society. Our lead character tries to win a game set by the creator, and thus control The Oasis, bringing people together in the physical world. If nothing else, it is a really good movie and definitely worth a Sunday afternoon viewing! AI can be the starting point for creating many of these programmes and virtual worlds, and for so much more. AI can also be both controlling and liberating. I would posit that right now, if we stand on the brink of this adventure with trepidation, we are all ‘Ready, Player, None ’. But, we shouldn’t be in denial or despair about this moment. What we should do is engage with it; so be sure to pick up the controller folks, as you have to be in the game to win it.

Guy Collins-Down joined Alleyn’s in 2022 as the School’s first Chief Operating Officer. With a wealth of top-tier experience under his belt, Guy is passionate about evolving educational provision and transforming learning spaces into positive, innovative and inspiring environments.

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Published on April 4, 2021 FUJIFILM, X-H1 Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Will Howell-Harte Lent 2023

How to Talk to Your Child About Misogyny In the wake of a new brand of influencers pedalling misogynistic ideology, Alleyn’s Head of PSHE, Will Howell-Harte, offers five tips on talking to your child about misogyny.

ippling abs, sexually available women, fast cars, piles of cash, guns and fat cigars: it sounds like the revival of a Hollywood franchise, but for the new breed of influencers pedalling misogynistic ideology this is just part of the brand. Their views are abhorrent. Sometimes they claim what they have to say is just a joke or ‘tongue in cheek’. Sadly, the ‘glamorous’ lifestyle of misogynistic influencers appeals to many young people, a sign not just that their offensive ideas might hold some truth, but that they could be the root to living a successful life. The perceived success of figures encouraging harmful beliefs coupled with the impressionability of ‘insecure’ young people has made many ‘vulnerable [to the] persuasive narratives’ of extreme misogynists. Modern society has faced increasing numbers of children feeling isolated and adrift, critical of the ways of others and uncertain in themselves. In this world, a clear voice telling you what to believe, what to think and how to behave (and seemingly living the TikTok dream) holds vast power.

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That is, so long as you aren’t one of the people they speak out against. Alleyn’s is a leading co-educational school with a progressive ethos. We have no tolerance for misogyny or any other form of prejudice. However, this problem has become so much bigger, and we need to actively challenge and resist misogyny and all other forms of prejudice as a community and as a society. But where to start?

Invite people in rather than calling them out. Showing understanding Counterintuitively, to combat misogyny we need to approach this conversation with respect and understanding for those who have been seduced by this harmful content. Only by consistently providing a supportive environment with a focus

on inclusion and belonging can we hope to address the powerful hold of these unacceptable beliefs and behaviours. Given that many misogynist influencers gained traction in the vacuum of alienation in today’s society, we should aim to ‘invite people in’ to the discussion rather than start by ‘calling them out’ and deepening their distrust of alternative narratives. Here at Alleyn’s, there will always be clear, consistent action and consequences, both disciplinary and restorative. We encourage any pupils to come forward and discuss their experiences with a trusted adult in school like a tutor, head of house or head of year. Start conversations with your child in an open way: ‘what do you understand by the term misogyny?’; ‘what problems are there with people holding these views?’; ‘do you know of anyone who has been a victim of misogynistic abusive language or actions?’. It might seem like a basic starting point, but, if your child is in one of the earlier years at school or you’re not used to having these conversations with them, starting at a simple point of understanding could help avoid any misconceptions. If they say something that you don’t

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agree with, keeping calm and asking them to explain further is going to be a better tactic than shutting down the conversation entirely.

Avoid focussing on specific influencers Obviously, this blog post comes at a time of renewed awareness and vigilance around misogyny and sexual violence. These messages have been communicated by influencers on social platforms but have also taken more subtle and insidious forms: gamers filming demonstration videos for the likes of YouTube have been banned from platforms for their use of hate speech, proving that what might sometimes seem like innocuous (even dull) videos can be peppered with harmful content. By avoiding the names of specific influencers, websites or groups, we avoid promoting them further (promotion after all is the core of their business model and central to their online presence). Equally, by avoiding making this a onetopic conversation and addressing offensive discourse over the longer term, we will also teach a lasting lesson about how to identify harmful, hate-filled content they have not yet come across. Taking the long view and addressing the core problem will hopefully future-proof them from further toxicity.

Encourage digital literacy Understanding how social media platforms work is a key part of our KS3 PSHE curriculum at Alleyn’s. This is gradually developed to include how to navigate online relationships as pupils move up through the school. Relationship and sex education (RSE) is embedded in our PSHE

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curriculum in line with statutory guidance designed to combat these values and beliefs. We work closely with external providers, It Happens Education, to support our discussions of gender equality. We continue open and collaborative discussions with pupils across all years through the Alleyn’s Equality Charter and have a flourishing FemSoc that devotes their time to discussing key topics relating to gender in school and the wider world. At home, you can remind them of the work they’ve already done but perhaps it would be beneficial to have an open discussion of how news stories are manipulated using emotive language to appeal to our base instincts rather than convey fact. You can also talk about the differences between appearance and reality – the darker backstory of some of these influencers has certainly revealed the seedy underbelly of the glamourised picture many project.

ANY hate speech normalises ALL hate speech Hostility towards minority groups perpetuated by media outlets, algorithms and online communities damages the fabric of society. Be it a refusal to apologise to holocaust survivors for divisive rhetoric that vilifies migrants, or the polarising language surrounding the rights of transgender people on both sides of the Atlantic, by denigrating one group of people or championing one over another, we are contributing to the normalisation of hate speech. This is a matter of equality and it has to stop.

construed. This is the exact point at which pupils have to be constructively challenged about what they have said and encouraged to reassess how others might perceive a comment that has been made. Only through cultivating combined literacy and empathy can we break down the cycle of low-level abuse which underscores hatred.

Avoid boy shaming Misogyny hurts everyone. Regardless of gender or sexual orientation there are no ‘winners’ when these attitudes are allowed to flourish. Young women are threatened by harassment and abuse because of it. Young men are emotionally and psychologically damaged by it. Everyone needs to have a clear understanding of what is the right and wrong way to treat someone. But there is also an opportunity for education. The resurfacing of this topic, by no means a new one, is a timely reminder that our work towards creating an equal society is, and will always be, a work in progress. We all need to own our part in that work.

Will HowellHarte is Head of PSHE and Teacher of English at Alleyn’s. He has a passion for media literacy and a longheld interest in issues pertaining to diversity, inclusion and the curriculum.

Sometimes young people say or write things without fully thinking about how their words could be

Alleyn’s On Magazine.

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Dorcas Maxwell Lent 2023

Standing Against Sexism Head of Alleyn’s Learner’s Programme, Dorcas Maxwell shares a few glimpses of Alleyn’s FemSoc’s journey, its members’ determination to explore equality and their call for us all to stand against sexism.

wo weeks ago, I stood at the doors of the Alleyn’s Wolfenden Sports Hall, welcoming pupils from across the year groups eagerly piling in to cheer on the Staff Netball Match, and reflected on the joyous manner in which each year the Feminist Society at Alleyn’s uses this occasion to raise awareness and funds for those women at the catastrophic end of sexist injustice, through the charity Women for Women International. I have had the great honour of being the staff support for the Alleyn’s Feminist Society for nearly three years now. I am honestly in awe of the approach our young leaders take and the tenacity of the core community. I marvel at how determined this group of girls and boys have been in their journey to explore equality in a balanced way, keeping in mind the genuinely dangerous implications of structural sexism while planning varied, interesting sessions to explore topics from Disney portrayals to Cherokee kinship systems. I’d love to share a few glimpses of their journey with you here. One particularly powerful FemSoc session this term was led by a boy who joined Alleyn’s in Year 12. I

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was moved to tears to hear of his experiences of the culture of sexism he perceived to be endemic at his previous school and to hear him speak about his very different experiences at our wonderful school. “Everyone is just so nice. So respectful. You take it for granted but you are so lucky to expect people to treat you with that level of kindness as normal.” We are lucky here. But I think if FemSoc have anything to do with it - we will do even better.

Something in our culture needs to change.

interesting picture of whether it’s girls or boys who choose to lean into leadership opportunities in academic spaces. We talked about how it’s not something innately in our brains and bodies that feeds these behaviours, it’s something in our wider culture and it needs to change. My favourite moment of our biannual, off-timetable co-curricular Field Day recently was seeing a group of Year 9 girls step onto the quad with Year 13 boys and join in the basketball. As staff and parents, we must voice loud and clear our encouragement of these girls taking up space, and likewise of our boys leading clubs in the cocurriculum.

In the week of International Women’s Day, I was on the balcony of our Pavilion with a group of Year 7 children before we watched a documentary on the England women’s national football team, also known as the Lionesses. Then we gently noticed who tends to use the space available on the fields and the multi-use games area (MUGA) — and who was sitting on the sides.

One lunchtime the Society explored the protests in Iran against the actions of the morality police. In another meeting they supported one another through their learning about shutting women out of university education. In terms of rights, we may seem a long way away from Afghanistan, from Iran. But we also see radicalisation in the UK. They explored The Casey Review of the Met Police in our own beloved London. The Society discussed how making light of sexism in the form of flippant language and lazy stereotyping is the thin end of the wedge that normalises sexist behaviour. We were reminded that if women are not in the room, at the table and leading discussions, they can be forgotten, and our whole society is poorer for it.

Our Society’s data paints an

Prompted by Caroline Criado Perez’s

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book Invisible Women, they looked at the data gap and the authority gap. Although men are more likely than women to be in a car crash, a woman in a collision “is 47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man … [and] 17% more likely to die,” FemSoc asked, “Why?” Why is using male as ‘the’ default in research problematic? How do structural inequalities lead to oppression? The girls and boys in FemSoc worked side by side to answer their own questions. Last year our FemSoc leaders talked us through incel culture through an analysis of Laura Bates’ work on Men Who Hate Women. This year we found ourselves discussing extreme misogyny again as we charted the growing online presence of Andrew Tate before he exploded into the news in December. These little moments add up. These are cultural touchstones which loom large in the lives of our young people. It adds up to a call to change: a call to fight structural sexism. A call for equality of the sexes. This is how our Standing Against Sexism statement came about. The students were all given the

opportunity to reflect on what they would change about it and what we should do to make it entirely habituated at Alleyn’s, during the week of International Women’s Day. The discussion which followed was wholehearted and deeply considered. We are not a school beholden to a ‘lad culture’ and the young people in front of me were genuinely curious, asking why some people feel the need to lean into and use the ‘lad culture’ power play. I love the work of Brene Brown on Daring Leadership in which she claims, “The greatest barrier to daring leadership is not fear; the greatest barrier is armour, or how we selfprotect when we’re in fear.” We want to work to build a community where our young people feel free to take off their gendered armour and be their authentic selves every day. One area the students have asked us to focus our action on is this:

We must do more to recognise, name and respond well to sexist language and behaviour in the moment.

approach this. It reminds us that the response at different levels matters. At the seed sowing level, we might ask, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” or, “What do you mean when you say that?”. At the hypothetical, “How might you feel if …”. The framework level allows us to lean into our ROCCK values, “How does that fit with our ideas about Respect / about Kindness?”. We can save the direct statement for much more problematic language and behaviours: “I feel uncomfortable with that and feel it is sexist / problematic because…” The most serious point should be punitive: “Don’t do that! Don’t say that!”. (Adapted from business-psychology consultancy Pearn Kandola’s Continuum of Intervention.)

Dorcas Maxwell is Head of the Alleyn’s Learners’ Programme and teacher of Philosophy and Religious Studies. She is a passionate supporter of our student-led Feminist Society and of sustainability initiatives across the School.

I find the challenge ladder a very helpful framework for how to

Alleyn’s Advertisement Alleyn’s ROCCK On Podcast: Diversity in Literature Alleyn’s ROCCK On is a school podcast which seeks to dive deep into a broad range of subjects and transport you into the world of Alleyn’s. The Diversity in Literature episode investigates what Alleyn’s is doing to diversity the English curriculum and our library’s collection of works. Listen up!

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Published on October 6, 2019 Apple, iPhone 7 Photo by John Schaidler on Unsplash

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Alexandra Smith Lent 2023

Diversity in Literature Head of English, Alex Smith, shares what Alleyn’s is doing to diversify the English curriculum so that every child in our community will see themselves, and the rich and varied world around them.

an you remember what you studied for your GCSE English Literature exam? Macbeth? Lord of the Flies? Of Mice and Men? To Kill a Mockingbird? For a long time in my near 20-year teaching career it felt as though English curricula in UK schools were stuck in a rut, with the same texts being wheeled out time and time again and unchanging exam board syllabi propping up a reading list that was ‘pale, male and stale’. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for Shakespeare, Golding et al, but, as a recent report by End Sexism In Schools pointed out, nationally 77% of novels studied at Key Stage 3 (Years 7 to 9) are authored by men, with 82% of KS3 novels featuring male protagonists: an alarming imbalance. The picture isn’t any more encouraging at GCSE or A level. In the OCR A level syllabus 25 out of the list of 26 core texts are by white writers, and only eight out of the 40 suggested set texts for the Comparative and Contextual Study paper (which students use for wider reading) are by authors of colour. That’s why, for the last five years, the Alleyn’s English Department have been committed to a thorough — and ongoing — overhaul and

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genuine diversification of our English curriculum in the hope that every child in our community will come to see themselves, and the rich and varied world around them, represented in the texts they study and that, by doing so, they will be equipped with the empathy and confidence to challenge and dismantle sexism, racism, homophobia — indeed, discrimination of any kind — when they encounter it.

There’s a lot to consider... we won’t always get it right. There’s a lot to consider when choosing new texts. While our pupils can handle sophisticated vocabulary and writing styles, we still need to make sure the subject matter is age-appropriate and it’s hard to find texts that strike the right balance of challenge and accessibility. There are often few resources available to support the teaching of less traditional texts, which means we

need to apply hundreds of man hours to the creation of engaging lesson plans and resources and, of course, there’s always the risk that after all that work the text won’t quite ‘land’ with the pupils in the way you had hoped. Inevitably, we won’t always get it right. We are proud that our curriculum is much more representative of female voices than the average: at KS3 pupils study a novel written by a female author each year (this year in Year 7 Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin or Bone Talk by Candy Gourlay, in Year 8 The Woman In Black by Susan Hill and in Year 9 Kindred by Octavia Butler, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara) and more than 50% of all the whole texts they study are written by women. This helps in some way to counteract the lack of equality in the set texts for GCSE. In order to provide as much variety as possible we use poetry and prose extracts to present diverse voices. For example, our Year 9 will also read and analyse works by Emmeline Pankhurst, Maya Angelou, Imtiaz Dharker, Edna St Vincent Millay, Greta Thunberg, Oprah Winfrey, Audrey Niffenegger and others. These are not substitutes for substantial works by these writers, but rather opportunities to show the diversity of, in this case, female voices and experiences. In an effort to tackle the

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lack of diversity in the A level syllabus, we have agreed that at least one of the coursework texts (which we can choose ourselves, within certain limits) is by a writer of colour. Recent popular choices have included Small Island by Andrea Levy, The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, and White Teeth and Swing Time by Zadie Smith, and our pupils have written intelligently about how these texts reflect the experiences of immigrant and Black and Asian communities in Britain and America. One of our Year 12 classes enjoyed studying Kae Tempest’s electrifying spoken-word album Let Them Eat Chaos, the first text by a non-binary author that we have included in our A level curriculum. Elsewhere, LGBTQ+ authors are seen in our Year 9 Anthology (Panti Bliss and Radclyffe Hall), and we study Queer Theory and queer readings of A level texts such as Dracula in Years 12 and 13. Whilst representation is of the utmost importance, discussions of racial and gender equality, and the challenging of white-centric, patriarchal, and cisgender ideologies can also happen while studying canonical texts by white, cis-male authors. Our study of The Tempest in Year 7, for example, explores ideas about the effects and

inherent problems of colonialism, while our reading of 17th Century revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi in Year 12 sees pupils unpacking the patriarchal system that imprisons the Duchess both literally and figuratively, and John Webster’s own role in perpetuating that system. We are also committed to representing alternative versions of masculinity to those harmful tropes so often seen perpetuated in popular culture and by the media. The toxicity of Macbeth’s masculinity — and, crucially, its consequences — is central to our study of that text at GCSE (yes, it’s still on the syllabus!), while Ian McEwan’s The Daydreamer, studied in Year 7, questions stereotypically masculine behaviours and presents alternatives. It is vital that we listen to and keep learning from our pupils about how they wish to be represented within the curriculum. This is why we have asked our pupil bodies, including our Minorities’ Student Union, for their reflections on their experiences of studying English at Alleyn’s and we will continue to consult and respond to feedback from pupils and parents as our work continues.

All of this is — has to be — just the beginning, however. We need to keep working hard to ensure that we are teaching the right texts in the right places. That we are representing our pupils and expanding their horizons. Literature has a unique power to inspire and engage, and we have a golden opportunity to capture our pupils’ hearts and imaginations in a way that will shape the rest of their lives. There is still much more work to be done; in many ways an effective curriculum is always a changing one and that’s what makes our job so exciting!

Alex Smith is currently Head of English and soon-tobe Head of Upper School at Alleyn’s. Alex has a passion for ensuring that every child in our community can see themselves, and the rich and varied world around them, through our curriculum.

Alleyn’s Advertisement Alleyn’s GRPPNG is the annual publication of the Alleyn’s Governors’ Research Project Prize; showcasing the critical thinking, careful research and sincere sense of academic curiosity of our prizewinners and runners-up. In writing these essays, our students have stretched their minds – and will stretch yours too. Dive in!

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Katherine Beith Trinity 2023

A Shrine to Reading Director of Studies Katherine Beith and the Alleyn’s Junior School Year 4 cohort consider the School’s recent reading journey.

hat do we know about reading? Reading helps our brains grow. Academic papers are full of the importance of reading. We know, for example, that reading for pleasure leads to an increase in attainment. Clark and DeZoya (2011) found a direct link between the two suggesting that pupils who read more gain higher results. We also know reading for pleasure is strongly influenced by teachers. (Cremin et al, 2009). How can we turn what we know to be true about reading into everyday practice? Here’s a clue from Phoebe in Year 4:

“Reading is a cloud for my imagination.” Exactly. Reading develops children’s vocabularies; it makes them braver with words and leads to far less inhibited writing. When asked to describe how a toaster worked, Scarlett in Year 4 said:

The mouse inside the toaster tells the gnomes who turn a wheel. The wheel pulls a rope which is tied to a single feather of the phoenix. On being tugged, the phoenix wakes his

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friends and they all breathe fire onto the toast. That is how a toaster works. Scarlett, Year 4 How much more interesting and creative is that than the ‘real’ answer? Apologies to the mechanical and electrical engineers who design our toasters!

Reading leads to less inhibited writing. For Max,

“Reading tells us about the past and all the things that have happened. You feel like you are there”. Reading teaches us about the world. Reading enables children to learn about the world without them having to take a single step. In recent years, we have found that our choice of class texts enriches our topic work and humanities. For example, the story Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll fed directly into the children’s learning about evacuation in their work on the Second World War. Children sense the effect:

“Reading takes me into another world full of adventures.” Miya “Every book is like a little adventure. You can choose which adventure to go on.” Florence Reading is a support to mental health. It is noticeable how calm and tranquillity descend on a room when children are reading or being read to. A study carried out by the University of Sussex in 2009 found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%. The university stated that “Reading can even relax the body by lowering your heart rate, easing tension in your muscles.” Or as Esme puts it:

“You can have a break from the real world.” It gives an escape to other worlds. Rereading old favourites gives a sense of safety and security in the predictability of familiar stories and the happy endings that we know are coming. Books are increasingly being written with mental health in mind. Empathy towards others is a powerful force in today’s world and realising they share something in common with a character can help children make sense of their own thoughts and feelings and feel seen in a way that perhaps the everyday world has not yet managed. According to Millie:

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“You always have someone to talk to when you are reading.”

reading, while also a sanctuary to escape to.

“Reading expands my knowledge and imagination.” Alex

“Sometimes you just can’t stop reading.” Archie

Reading improves general knowledge. We have thought about how to expose children to current affairs and general knowledge in an appropriate and meaningful way, being mindful to ensure the input is age appropriate. The school magazine has numerous interesting articles to tempt young readers. We subscribe to The Week Junior and National Geographic and children in Year 6 enjoy day old print copies of The Times and Guardian, secreted away from the staff room every evening.

“When I pick up a book, I cannot hear anything as I am so absorbed. It feels like I am there.” Layla Reading gives many opportunities to flex and develop higher order thinking skills. Predictions can be made about events and character development to come, information from non-fiction books can be analysed and synthesised for a research project and alternative endings can be imagined and explored.

“Reading makes you clever while you are having fun.” Simon “Reading gives paper and ink a new perspective,” Arabella Raising the profile of reading can be important, too. Our school library has undergone a total transformation in recent years and, thanks to a major rebuild of the school site, it is now double the size. It is in a prominent position, an oasis in the centre of the school building and a shrine to

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It is hard to feel ambivalent about reading after visiting the library. Our librarian organises numerous temptations to encourage the children to read and has learnt the reading habits of nigh on 300 children, tempting them with books daily. There are competitions a-plenty and so much on offer to inspire. Gifted readers from Years 5 and 6 enjoy weekly visits to the Senior School library to catch up with more advanced literature.

“Mrs Edwards knows all our reading preferences and delivers books to our hands.” Katya Covid-19, surprisingly, did a lot for reading. The single best thing that came about as a result was the creation of a lunchtime reading slot. This 20-minute session, in which the form teacher reads, provides a time for the children to enjoy listening to a story.

“If the teacher reads, it is easier to understand the story. Adults do interesting voices and they are good at reading.” Catherine As well as providing such a special time to connect with the children, it is extraordinary to review the variety of books read. In Year 6 last year, we read stories about World War 1, animals in captivity, war in Syria, the story of a young Jewish boy living in Poland in the 1940s and a child detective with a troubled home life.

So, what comes next on our reading journey? Events and competitions celebrating literature and reading have already been introduced and more are on the way. The first “writing laureates” have been created. A poetry evening has just happened too. Imaginative initiatives will continue to make reading the most wonderful and vibrant part of everyone’s lives.

“My parents had to push back my bedtime as I just can’t stop reading.” Rex That says it all.

Katherine Beith is Director of Studies at Alleyn’s Junior School. She is passionate about enabling children to be the best version of themselves, and loves coming to school everyday. References: Mapping the interrelationships of reading enjoyment, attitudes, behaviour and attainment An exploratory investigation Christina Clark and Sarah De Zoysa National Literacy Trust July 2011 Teachers as readers: building communities of readers: T Cremin, M Mottram, F Collins, S Powell, K Safford – Literacy, 2009 – Wiley Online Library. Reading and stress: Andy Chiles, University of Sussex 30th March 2009 Bloom’s taxonomy (revised 2001), the levels have slightly different names and their order was revised: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create (rather than Synthesize)

“Reading calms you down, lets you get away from your life and puts you in someone else’s shoes.” Martha

Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Published on December 22, 2020 SONY, SLT-A37 Photo by Camilo Contreras on Unsplash

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Shomit Dutta Advent 2022

‘Stumped’: Two Great Playwrights, One Great Game Shomit Dutta shares the inspiration behind his play, ‘Stumped’ - a two-hander with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter at a cricket match in the Cotswolds that goes wrong. The two, both Nobel-prize winning playwrights, were great friends who loved and talked about cricket but never played together. The play, which will be on at Hampstead Theatre this summer, imagines what might have happened if they did.

Published on June 28, 2021 Samsung, SM-M315F Photo by tazain bin alam on Unsplash

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Described by Michael Brearly in Prospect Magazine as ‘A delight...tight, witty, zany and, to me, touching,’ Shomit shares his inspiration behind the play, the ups and downs of taking the idea for the play to fruition and how writing, like sport, is a performance:

y interest in Beckett began in the sixth form. I found his work bleak but beautiful, remorselessly paring down of language and action with a gallows humour. I came to Pinter slightly later but was captivated by his precise use of language to create compelling worlds of menace and confusion. The idea of creating fictional versions of Beckett and Pinter came about when a friend and I were asked to put together something to celebrate their close friendship and mutual love of cricket for the International ‘Happy Days’ Beckett Festival in Ireland. We decided on a cricket match followed by an evening event with actors reading passages, letters and anecdotes linking Pinter, Beckett and cricket. The friend suggested that, as part of that, I should write a short comic skit with Beckett and Pinter in a cricket match. I thought about it but decided against it because I didn’t want to do a rushed job. After all, cricket was my favourite sport and these were two of my very favourite writers. So the idea got put on the back burner. I ended up writing Stumped (originally called Yes…No…Wait) a few years later during the first set of Covid-19 restrictions in 2020. Like most people, I found myself in a peculiar state of stasis, waiting indefinitely and stuck in one place;

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a situation akin to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. This informed my approach. I had Beckett and Pinter also waiting (to bat), seemingly stuck as I was, and the play ended up resembling a kind of anxiety dream formed in the merged minds of Beckett and Pinter filtered through with my own — a surreal ménage of two characters and an author. I’m not sure how well placed I am to share insights about playwriting. Writing is a solitary business, and every writer finds their own modus operandi. Still, here are a couple of reflections...

Every writer finds their own modus operandi. I used to be sceptical about the claim put forward by many playwrights (most famously Pirandello but also Pinter) that it often seems as though the characters, as it were, write the play for you, and that your job as the author is to get their words down. That seemed a little too arch. But I found myself changing my mind. Writing does seem to emerge chiefly from the subconscious, ideas and lines do just pop up, through what Joyce called epiphanies. The important thing is to be well placed to receive them, a bit like being ‘in the zone’ when playing sport. After all, writing is performing.

many things can go wrong, even at the best of times. Covid-19 and its crippling impact on the arts meant that getting the play cast, finding a venue, and rehearsing and recording it was a long journey with ups and downs. Oddly enough, this journey reflected the play’s original title. First, I arranged an industry reading at the Jermyn Street Theatre with the help of casting director Irene Cotton and actor Susannah Harker; this led to my finding producers (‘Yes’). Then, partly due to the impact of Covid-19, the project stalled (‘No’). Then we managed to get the thing back on its feet but with no fixed date (‘Wait’). After all that, when the Queen died two days before we were meant to do the livestreamed performance for a live audience at Lords, the live event got cancelled, leaving only the on-demand digital recording. Still, despite these ups and downs, what made it all worthwhile was the fact that I had written exactly what I wanted to, not what I thought an audience might want hear. So, my credo, insofar as I have one, is write what your gut, and possibly your characters, tell you to.

Shomit Dutta is a teacher of Classics at Alleyn’s. A playwright, writer and translator who also reviews books on cricket and the classics, Shomit has been a member of Harold Pinter’s cricket team Gaieties CC for over 20 years and was captain during Pinter’s final years.

I also learnt that the process of getting a play put on is nerve-racking. So

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Guy Collins-Down Trinity 2023

The Marginal Gains of Classroom Design The battle for the top has never been so fierce, and schools are acutely aware of the need to maximise the value they add to their pupils’ education, says Alleyn’s COO Guy Collins-Down. Of course, this is not all about league tables, but when the difference between 15th and 21st place can be a few missed grades, you can see the jeopardy some schools might feel themselves to be in to secure the best marketing byline.

tatistics can, of course, be presented in many ways, and organisations within and beyond the educational sector can select the most appropriate data to support their claims — as Benjamin Disraeli said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. League tables and data selection (and humour!) aside, what we do have is a duty to ensure our students have the absolute best chance of success and this, alongside the essentials of an holistic education, can come down to marginal gains from small interventions. Classroom design is one of the most overlooked. We have been designing our classrooms in the same way since the Victorian era of lofty school board buildings: lines of desks facing the front, packed in tight. Did you know that the school bell reportedly only came about because quartz was so expensive some schools could only afford one clock, or in another origin story, because pupils were being prepped for the rhythms of the factory floor? Easter holidays are long enough so children could go out and plant the harvest, while the summer holiday was for harvesting. These

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structures still affect school life today, well over a century later. Why are we so stuck in tradition?

Let’s be progressive and shake up classroom design. Let’s be progressive, shake up classroom design a little and see what inspiring environments we can create. Here are some of the aspects we could consider: • Lighting is Life: So much of our life is spent shrouded in dull and uninspiring lighting. Light contributes to how we feel, how we see colours, it shapes our mood and controls our response to the environment. More than often though it is an afterthought, and we are doomed to ‘strip lighting’. When upgrading to LED we often just replace the previous

tungsten fixtures like for like, but LED lux levels are significantly higher. So, we have overly bright spaces and… headaches. A simple dimmer switch allows a teacher to control lighting for concentration work, collaborative, display or calming. Happily, dimmers don’t cost too much. • Ergonomics Matter: We expect our charges to learn, but we put them in the most uncomfortable furniture. Concentrations drops by 50% after just 20 minutes of no movement. In a world of marginal gains, ergonomics to maximise comfort and concentration couldn’t be more important – for every child in our schools but particularly important for many neurodiverse students. Imagine how many lost minutes a year you have for each student for the sake of buying a £30 chair over one that is higher priced but that has a positive impact on focus? • Colour Changes Moods: It is well documented that colour can change the way we feel. The same applies to design, and the colours we use in schools are important to create the right learning environment. All too often you see primary school design being all about how many colours you can use. I believe in using colour as a task-based tool. Classrooms should be neutral colours to create calming environments, using display and

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subtle colour through furniture, or other means. Red is alertness, green is calming, orange is creativity. Also, don’t just limit yourself to paint, and do consider using lighting instead. • Air Quality: The CO2 average is 400ppm outside, but in most of our classrooms it can be over three times that. We have all been in a stuffy room and nearly fallen asleep. How many of your classrooms have the same problem? Ensure you have opening windows, cross flow, and if you can afford additional ventilation such as air filtration, do it! • Sweat The Small Stuff: Design is holistic and not just about instant impact. It is important to fully think through a design. How does it make you feel? How does it work on a day-to-day basis? Is it robust enough? A design can be breath-taking, but if the door handle breaks after a week this helps nobody. • Pretty Isn’t Everything: We have all seen beautiful design schemes and thought ‘wow’, but after a time it starts to fade and is easily damaged. Thought needs to be paid to the robustness of a design. As a COO myself I see the full life cycle of design. Picking the right products that clean easily, stand up to daily use and have long lifespans are all part of the process. But you can still achieve great aesthetics, you just need to think them through! ‘Pretty’ fades fast but having rooms which are robust from the get-go ensures the gains you designed from the start stay longer. • Biophilia – I can’t emphasise enough the power of Mother Nature in the classroom. There are many studies which have

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showed positive responses to plants in office and learning environments. They aren’t often in enough volume to provide massive CO2 benefits, but the placebo effect of the green is mentally calming and can help boost creativity.

rooms? I strongly encourage anyone thinking of projects to ask students what brands they aspire to in retail and go look at these spaces. What makes them attractive, why do they work so well? Schools could learn a lot in this way.

• Stimulate Senses - A strong classroom design should stimulate as many senses as possible. The importance of touch and sound particularly can transform a learning environment. Thought should be paid to how differing (and preferably, sustainable) materials can be used to enhance the experience of learning.

I’m not here looking to preach on how to design classrooms, but to challenge us to all do better. A longstanding frustration of mine is when, in any building project, the focus seems to be on the building, rather than what goes on inside it. Typically, the Fixtures, Fittings & Equipment budget on a project will be less than 5% and is always first to be value engineered. Given we spend most of our time inside the building, why are we doing this to ourselves? I would encourage you to take a look at building accreditations such as WELL or LEED which, although they focus on a more sustainable approach, do offer a strong guiding principle for designing sensibly.

When planning, let’s focus on what happens inside the building. • Build Context - Wherever possible, classrooms should reference their local context or their history. Be these images of the past, motifs from logos or simply values and colour schemes, they can be incredibly effective at quietly reinforcing values, heritage and aspiration. • Look Beyond: Never just look to your own industry for inspiration. Look around you to see what others are doing. You might be surprised! Why shouldn’t schools look at the likes of workspace provider WeWork for ideas on classroom design, or restaurant chain Wagamama for our dining

So, if you want to think about how best to serve your students, why not think about an inside-out approach to design and explore what marginal gains you might be able to achieve? It could help with the league tables, but most importantly it will provide your students with the boosted learning environment they deserve.

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Nolan Price Trinity 2023

A New Now Familiarity famously breeds contempt and can render what is in front of you invisible. Nolan Price, teacher of Art at Alleyn’s, taught in Japan for 5 years, adjusting to what was his ‘new now’. How did his step into the unknown affect his life and teaching?

eaching art is centred around encouraging students to look and build awareness of artistic opportunities in the world around them. Artists should inherently notice things others might not, but this can be a difficult skill to nurture and, as I was finding, it can be hard to maintain this open focus yourself. 20 years of teaching in the UK had left me in need of sharpening my senses. More than this, the relentless forward thrust had left me not quite as attuned to the ‘here and now’ as is healthy. In terms of getting a change, Japan was up there at the extreme. I was equally entranced and confronted by the world of otherness that I encountered. There was little that was familiar. I was back to questioning what I saw. Back to the position I expect of my pupils. Becoming the learner, the one that needs to somehow be comfortable in the unknown. Confused Acclimatisation was hard. Although everything is, as you’d expect, ordered and aligned in Japan, I was confused. The Western cultural cues I brought with me left me ill-equipped to make sense of the newness in front of me. Think in your head: what does a post office look like? You’ll

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no doubt have quite a clear vision, but these presets did not match what I saw. Things did not compute. I was lost. So much of the working out of the world around you is garnered from embedded knowledge, things we intrinsically know, and visual prompts we have.

It is curious when your everyday is not so everyday any more. This is crucial to how we interact and exist with other people in society. When you are walking down the street and are about to pass people – how do you know which way they are going? Are they carrying on? Turning left? Turning right? Until now I had somehow known and with this understanding mirrored, a sleek crossover was the norm. In Japan I never performed this easy ballet. My movements were awkward and obtrusive. I just couldn’t grasp what other people were likely to do and thus what was expected of me. You

don’t know what you know until it is gone. Emerging from the Bubble In my familiar home society, mixing with those of similar background and cultural experience, I had long taken for granted that others would share my frame of thinking. Like most, I lived in a bubble. My Western education had left me secure in a certain frame of knowledge. My immediate everyday world was one of a shared perspective. My time as a foreigner, a gaijin (literally ‘outsider’ or ‘alien’), was a time of a lack of shared understanding, but of a constant bridging toward it. As I’d expect of my pupils, I questioned to try and understand. Are there ways I can be less of an individualistic member of society? Should I wear shoes indoors? Why has my rice arrived at the end of my meal? My New World When I look back at the first photos I took on arrival in Japan in September 2016, there’s a fascination in the differences I noticed in the most mundane things. When your everyday is not so everyday any more, it is a curious place to be. I would wonder at subterranean driveways, the dramatic downward sweeping curves not computing after the London terraces. Then it was the street rubbish. We’re not talking

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Published on December 11, 2017 NIKON CORPORATION, NIKON D90 Photo by Michel Catalisano on Unsplash

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actual throw aways, this is Japan, that is not done, but most journeys were enriched by street surprises, unintentional sculptures of the everyday. As an artist, I think seeing these discoveries as sculpture, not necessarily needing to understand more, went some way to helping me understand the new world around me.

in life to find out what real beauty is and notice it everywhere”. Those Japanese verges set me on this path. I’m developing into a keen gardener, on the lookout, even on home ground, for what is new in my now.

Seeing Afresh With little cultural grounding, I had no choice but to see afresh and appreciate things on a surface level. There was a freedom in the unadulterated pleasure of just enjoying what I was seeing without needing to understand it: ghostly wrapped belongings hinted at what lay beneath, mysterious shop signage with illegible text, mascots and cartoon characters related to animals or deities outside my education, new plants on verges.

Headspace Time Teaching by nature is in the now with the new. We bring new knowledge and experience to pupils, they bring their multiple new perspectives. The world they inhabit is one of constant refresh. Their digital lives can lead them to have constant input. To have a life on the cusp of news cycles and a TikTok post can paradoxically numb the ability to live in the now. Art is a subject where this connection to the new in their now can be reestablished. The hands-on physicality of the touch of clay, the movement of paint are places away from everything else. I often talk to my pupils of ‘getting in the zone’.

Dutch garden designer, Piet Oudulf, world famous for his plantings on New York’s High Line has said “I discover beauty in things that are not on first sight beautiful. It is the journey

To help with this I have introduced a ‘Headspace time’ into my lessons. This is a 10-minute task, most often at the start of the lesson, in silence. This is intended to provide the space

to reset, so that pupils are able to acclimatise and find their space in the room, the subject and themselves. I want pupils to benefit from forgetting the lessons they’ve just had, the conversations they’ve had on the way, what lies ahead of them and the all-round buzz of their busy lives to be present and here, enjoying the new things that are happening right now.

Nolan Price is a ceramist and a teacher of Art at Alleyn’s. Whilst living and teaching in Tokyo, Nolan drew inspiration from Japanese culture and aesthetics to create ceramic sculptures and abstract painting, which utilise chance and gesture. His work was recently featured as part of the 2023 Dulwich Festival. Instagram: @nolanprice4628.

Alleyn’s Advertisement Alleyn’s ROCCK On Podcast: Community and Partnerships Alleyn’s ROCCK On is a school podcast which seeks to dive deep into a broad range of subjects and transport you into the world of Alleyn’s. The Community and Partnerships episode shines a light on the Alleyn’s Academy, our set of cocurricular clubs for local primary school children, and how Alleyn’s is contributing to our local community. Listen up!

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Joel Stewart Trinity 2023

A Catalyst for Change Alleyn’s Sports Facilities Lead, Joel Stewart, describes how travel can change your mindset for the better, something he learned when a trip to the Middle East turned into an ‘opportunventure’.

Not Just a Vacation t’s not every day that someone close to you moves to the Middle East for an amazing new job opportunity that they cannot turn down, but this is what happened to my cousin and his wife in 2013. After a few years a friend and I decided to pay them a visit in the month of March 2015 for a 10-day holiday that changed my life forever.

many quarters about the country’s stance on LGBTQ+ and other human rights issues. Having acknowledged that, I was lucky to meet many lovely people during my time in the country, all of whom seemed willing to help each other for nothing more than a smile.

As a holiday destination, we loved Qatar. We had an amazing time traveling around Doha and taking part in most of what West Bay has to offer from jet skiing around a manmade ‘Venice’ lookalike, enjoying the Corniche promenade, dune buggy days in the desert and dining out at some of the many hotels and restaurants that Doha has to offer.

Why did I feel so at one with leaving my comfort zone?

However, I also began to realise that Qatar was starting to have a deeper impact on me personally. I felt there was a vibrancy about the place and it wasn’t just about the forthcoming World Cup. It feels important to acknowledge here, that there was of course a hugely mixed reaction to Qatar’s hosting of the competition, amidst controversy in

I have been lucky enough to travel to many countries but have never felt the amity, safety and appeal that Doha gave me for the 10 days I was there. Originally, I thought the feeling would pass once I got back to London, and it would be another holiday destination I could highly recommend to anyone interested. But Qatar had got under my skin and

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when I got back home, I started to google “jobs in Qatar” and to my amazement several opportunities came up that I was qualified for, interested in and felt that Qatar could be part of my long-term career. So, with zero hesitancy, I sent off my CV and cover letter even if it was with no great optimism. New Job, New Life Lo and behold I had a response from one company within 2 days, an interview in central London the following week and a job offer with flight and accommodation on the table within 2 weeks . . . Wooow! I wondered why I felt so at one with leaving my comfort zone to go and live in a completely different part of the world where the rules of the land, climate and the people / culture were so different from England. Perhaps it was because I had felt completely safe while I was there and had an inner peace I’ve never experienced before. This might seem a little over the top, but I thought this ‘inner peace’ would allow me to relax and enjoy life more, which in turn might allow me to have greater focus on the tasks at hand (work, play, family, etc.) without having to look over my shoulder or worry as much at all. It felt like an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, so

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Published on March 2, 2022 Canon, EOS R5 Photo by Visit Qatar on Unsplash

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I sorted out my affairs in the UK to embark on this “opportunventure” of a lifetime.

I was able to bring that back to London and open conversations with absolutely anyone.

Starting work was amazing. On my first day I remember looking out the window for most of it in awe of my new surroundings, the incredible architecture of buildings in West Bay and probably disbelief that I was even there embarking on this new way of life, with the start of the week being a Sunday and ending on Thursday!

A New Calm After about 3 months I was very settled and living in a great flat share 5 minutes from work with a pool on the roof, a gym and café area all within the building. I came to find this is pretty standard in most Doha city accommodation. I had made friends and had a good social life even in what I had thought would be the desert. Every weekend felt like a miniholiday as I could go to the beach, rent a boat on the Corniche or just spend time by the pool in perfect weather. It was wonderful, and that’s when the realisation began to kick in that what started as a holiday had become a way of life.

Meditation I soon got into a routine of my new life that included tailored suits, business lunches and lots of time on the phone undertaking deals. On my travels I started to interact with the local people and others from around the world that have moved there permanently. Most people living the country were Muslim, but not all. After a while, whenever the call to prayer would happen, subconsciously I would spend 5 mins asking / hoping for a blessing also, which turned into meditation in the evening when at home. I was also asked where I am ‘from’ by local people which was understandable as whenever I told people I’m from England, I was given a peculiar look and was asked again “No but where are you from?” to which I replied, “Jamaica” and repeatedly got a response of “Ahh… Bob Marley”, a big grin and a look of acceptance. Research shows that being friendly to strangers does make you happier and will rub off onto others, while at the same time you learn a lot more about different cultures. After speaking so freely to strangers,

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You too, could turn a holiday into a way of life... I found that living in a place with a low crime rate reduces the social anxieties and invisible tensions (compared to those floating around the fast pace of London city), and creates further calm and inner peace. I was very happy and grateful that I had made the move, often wondering what I would be doing if I was back in London.

and spend time with my daughter who was starting secondary school in the UK. I knew I had to come back and be close to my family after living the dream and earning a tax-free salary. So I left Qatar to fully support my daughter and was able to get straight back into work. It didn’t take long before the London hustle and bustle crept back in, and I swiftly realised the atmosphere on the ground in London is far away from the one on the ground in Doha. This gave me a greater appreciation for the tranquillity that I experienced there, as well as an acknowledgement that it can offer great opportunities to people from all over the world who would like to experience the country. It’s not everyday a close friend or just someone you know completely moves to the other side of the world, but this could be a catalyst for change in your life too, as it was in mine. You too, could turn a holiday into a way of life...

Joel Stewart Joel is the Sports Facilities lead at Alleyn’s School. He has a keen interest in holistic wellbeing and finance. Joel is passionate about child, adolescent and adult psychoanalytical therapy and has long-held expertise in all things sport, health and fitness and financial services.

A New Me in the UK After 18 months I had a decision to make – whether to stay in balmy Qatar or move back to wintry London

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Dr Rob Atkinson Lent 2023

In Your Element When did you last feel like you were really ‘in your element’? Alleyn’s Assistant Head, Dr Rob Atkinson, explores the realisation that came to him after a weekend walking in the sunlit Dorset countryside with friends, enjoying life and the magic of the outdoors.

Published on April 1, 2023 SONY, ILCE-7M3 Image left by Tino Rischawy on Unsplash

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came back to work on Monday with a renewed sense of purpose, raring to go for the week ahead (which I must admit is not always the case!) Of course, feeding emotional relationships, connections with friends and experiencing a sense of flow are all key tenets of positive psychology so perhaps it is no surprise that I felt the way I did. But while doing some leadership training with some of the Alleyn’s operational Heads of Department, I was reminded of the potential connection between positive wellbeing and good leadership. This is not new I realise, and may well be an obvious link to many readers, but much like some of our students I am an ‘experiential learner’ rather than a purely theoretical being! Getting to know better colleagues I don’t work with so often and facilitating connections between them gave me a real sense of meaning in my work as well as a sense or flow. The tenets of good leadership and positive wellbeing could not have been clearer to me at that point nor as well-linked in my mind. This got me thinking. Is good leadership always linked to good well-being? Our leadership approach at Alleyn’s is called ‘Make a Difference’ and is based around three pillars: knowing yourself better, making strong connections with your team and with others, and seeking and developing meaning and purpose in the things that you do. The first group at Alleyn’s to experience training in this approach were our current School Prefects and they certainly brought a refreshing energy, altruism and a can-do attitude to the course, as well as a total lack of cynicism. Watching them

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enthusiastically complete their flip charts on “what would be missing if they didn’t exist as a group” – at 9pm on a Friday evening in Surrey, I might add! – was most definitely a standout moment for me as a teacher. And so, returning to my original question: do all good leaders experience positive well-being? Casting my mind back through our recent national leaders gave me few clues as well as sending a few shivers down my spine so I firmly closed that door and thought about some leaders closer to home! As Head of Sixth Form, I have worked with some brilliant student leaders over the past eight years and this gave me some good, if rather

Do you know what your values really are? circumstantial, evidence for a link. However, in formulating our ‘Make a Difference’ approach, I have had the good fortune to read some insightful and engaging work on leadership philosophy as well as a decent amount of positive psychology too in support of our collective efforts to foster greater well-being amongst the students. And the same key themes shine through: if you want to ‘live in your element’, get to know yourself well, understand your strengths and what’s important to you, build connections with others, and seek meaning and purpose in what you do. While travelling back from Dorset,

and feeling the positive energy ebb slowly away as London approached, I desperately tried to bottle the feelings of connection and meaning that I had experienced over the weekend. And for what it’s worth, here’s what I came up with (whilst travelling through some roadworks on the M3 motorway) by way of ‘top tips’: • When and where do you currently live in your element? List all the activities you do where your strengths and values come together. • If you’re not sure what your strengths are, you could start with the Values in Action character strengths survey (find it online) to help find out. • If you’re not sure what’s important to you, explore what your values really are. The chapter “Living into our values” in Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead (Vermillion, 2018) is as good a place to start as any; • Finally, think about where and how you can combine your strengths, values and passions going forward. Here’s to life in your element; long may it continue!

Dr Rob Atkinson is Assistant Head and Head of Digital Academy and Leadership Development at Alleyn’s. He is passionate about guiding young people and colleagues to find and follow their strengths in life.

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Gavin English Lent 2023

The Great and the Good Being ‘great’ is all well and good. But being ‘good’? Now we’re talking, says Alleyn’s Deputy Head (Pastoral), Gavin English.

ear with me while I tell you that greatness can be overrated. To my mind, someone might have a particularly high level of ability in a defined area that makes others say, “Wow, they’re great at (insert activity here...)”. Or maybe you’re successful against a particular metric ‘Wow...They must be great – look; how much money they have / how big their house is / how fast their car is / how many books they’ve had published / how many people they’re in charge of / at how many certificates they have.’ Perhaps you have a particular skill that sets you apart ‘Woohoo... They’re great at keeping all those balls (metaphorical or literal, you choose) in the air at once.’ Or is it the case that the stars and fates align for that perfect moment of pure peak performance that sees the seemingly impossible made possible and allows us a glimpse of greatness? Brazilian footballer Robert Carlos’ incredible free kick against France in 1997 is a fine example. The internet and book shops (remember those) is / are full of guidance and direction on how to be great, better or the best. The worst of these espouse the value of simplified and often deliberately

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misinterpreted research such as the popularised version of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to expert / extraordinary proficiency, that saw so many children fall out of love with their once beloved pianos, footballs and crayons. Others point to the habits or attributes in apparently high achieving ‘derigueur’ individuals who, by whatever metrics arrived at by the author, are apparently worthy of our aspirations.

Greatness can be overrated. The best move the goalposts, they speak about great in a different context and allude to greatness as not something to be achieved or arrived at but as something deeper; positive actions and attitudes that make an impact on those around you, society and even the world! It may not sound that exciting, which is probably why they dress it up a bit, but what I think they are reaching for is ‘good’, not good on the sliding scale of achievement or recognition but ‘good’ as in of positive character. There’s of course nothing wrong with great. Great is memorable, great is magic moments and iconic images - it’s electrifying, powerful and at

Alleyn’s, achievable - but we must be careful that our children aren’t too preoccupied with whether they are great or not in any given context but more concerned with whether they feel they are on the path to becoming a good person. Dr Tara Porter in her quite extraordinary book You Don’t Understand Me speaks about the number of levels that adolescents, especially teenage girls are judged and judge themselves on. She highlights that a young person’s desire to be the best, compulsion to live up to unrealistic expectations or the feeling that they must better themselves at every turn, with extraordinary performance or greatness as the goal can be incredibly damaging.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The irony is of course that if we can inculcate in young people the desire to be ‘good’ to model and live values such as those that Alleyn’s sets out in ‘ROCCK’ (Respect, Opportunity, Curiosity, Courage, Kindness), then greatness will come and when it does, we can celebrate not only its arrival but the individual who, for however fleetingly, achieved it, and after the euphoria, the manner of them getting there. Alleyn’s being the remarkable place that it is, greatness shows up on a pretty regular basis.

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Published on October 9, 2019 Apple, iPhone 8 Photo by Olenka Varzar on Unsplash

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It’s always interesting to me to observe those that genuinely deserve their moment and the reaction of those around them. Joyful admiration is quite something to experience, to see a friend who you respect and care for deeply, achieve the extraordinary, is a special moment that can stay with us as much as our own glories. Ed Sayeeng, is a friend and basketball teammate (and rival actually) of many years. As a point guard by trade, he is a facilitator, a distributor, shunning the limelight, driving the offence and making everyone else look good whilst doing all the running on defence. One of, if not my most memorable magic moments in what was a long and modestly decorated basketball career, was not my own — it was Ed’s. Two free throws to make after the final buzzer and one down in the London Senior Men’s Basketball final. One to draw, one to win... This instant is also something quite legendary amongst the London, and in fact, national basketball

community. Yes, it’s obviously an impressive ‘clutch’ (under pressure) play but it’s not extraordinary, there are loads of them, and the level of competition, although elite is modest. However, it sustains; year on year, end of season and sometimes at other times, the video resurfaces, comments and ‘likes’ are chucked about and the reason for that is Ed.

Don’t chase greatness at the expense of happiness. He is admittedly a ‘baller’ (really good at basketball) but quite frankly, you could not meet a kinder, more accommodating and genuine person, this is his moment of greatness, on the court where he spent his formative years (Brixton) and we love him, so we share in that joy.

So where was I going with this... Greatness, revel in it when it happens to you, recognise and cheer it in others, but be careful that you don’t chase it so hard that it comes at the expense of happiness or that when you get there, there’s no one to enjoy it with. ‘Great’ is… er...great, but good sustains and when ‘The Good’ achieve it, no matter how fleetingly, we all get to join the party. As Maya Angelou said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Gavin English is Alleyn’s Deputy Head (Pastoral). A longstanding teacher and former Director of Sport, he is passionate about the positive role that pupils can play in the wider world - “It’s harder to feel sad when you’re making others happy!”

Alleyn’s Advertisement Alleyn’s Polyglot Papers is the biannual MFL magazine designed and edited by Alleyn’s students. Stimulating articles on a variety of topics are published in French, Spanish, English and German, as well as in some of the many other languages spoken by our School community. Happy reading!

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Published on April 11, 2017 Canon, EOS 70D Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Ben Jones Advent 2022

The Pillars of Partnership Alleyn’s Head of Partnerships, Ben Jones, reflects on why the School’s partnerships are symbiotic, sustainable, and specific.

mile away from Alleyn’s School, printed on a railway bridge, are the words of an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Surely a rallying-call for partnerships, this sentiment has been at the heart of many of our schools since their foundations and is a reminder for us to use what we have been given; our human, financial, and physical resources to share opportunities and access with and for the communities around us. And as our pupils build connections and collaborate with others, as their confidence is built and their perspectives are expanded, their desire and ability to contribute to the global society is surely increased. We believe there are four keys to successful partnerships, the first of which is what makes them so exciting: good partnerships are symbiotic. The skills developed, the relationships formed and the experiences gained through interaction with varied partnerships are as enriching and horizon-expanding for our pupils and teachers as they are for our partners. The second key is that partnerships are sustainable, with clear

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organisational structures in place, roles defined, expectations clear and funding in place. And this leads to the third: partnerships need to be specific with clear objectives co-designed by each partner with targeted outcomes for targeted groups. And finally, partnerships will self-evaluate, with each partner being critical about whether they meet the three previous criteria, and how they measure up to our joint school values.

Partnerships help pupils build confidence and expand. perspectives. At Alleyn’s we have developed and are expanding a coherent partnership programme as a critical part of every pupil’s Alleyn’s education. Each week students from Alleyn’s engage in an array of volunteering and outreach activities including helping at a community fridge, supporting primary school children in their reading, socialising

with the elderly, providing food to the homeless, helping at after-school clubs and arranging fundraising activities for school charities. Furthermore, through timetabled enrichment sessions, our Year 12 students visit a number of local primary schools having prepared practical lessons in science, art, animation, cookery, drama and music. ‘Volunteering [at a community fridge] has been a big eyeopener for me…we should all learn to appreciate the things we have.’ - A student in Year 11 And such partnership work is not restricted to school-time here at Alleyn’s: Saturday mornings see fifty Year 5 students from local schools attend a fun and engaging maths extension sessions programme supported by twenty-five Year 11 mentors from Alleyn’s. Tuesday evenings give us a chance to welcome over 100 Year 4 and Year 5 pupils from local primary schools to the Alleyn’s Academy for a wide range of sporting activities, enthusiastically supported by our Year 10, 11 and 12 student helpers. And each summer around 100 pupils from Year 3, 4 and 5, identified by their primary schools, join us for our enriching Alleyn’s Summer School programme where they enjoy a range of fun subjects and extra-curricular activities all brilliantly supported by our Year 9 mentors.

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‘One pupil, a school refuser, completely loved it – he was transformed.’ - A member of staff at a local primary school talking about the Alleyn’s Summer School Through the excellent Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership (SSLP) we are able to collaborate with a network of state and independent schools, promoting educational opportunities for pupils and staff including engaging speaker programmes, shared student activities and talks, teacher training events, university preparation and cross-school student-voice projects. ‘Please put us at the top of your list!’ - A head of a local primary school when asked about our partnership offering. Similarly, we are inspired by the

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. deep personal and professional enrichment experienced by those involved in our various global partnerships, as our pupils collaborate with peers in Japan, Ukraine, Sierra Leonne, South Africa and most recently, the United States.

collaborate with others in targeted, enriching and fun projects the mutual benefits are vast. We at Alleyn’s want to go far and we firmly believe that in order to do so we must, along with with our network of brilliant community partners, go together.

Ben Jones is Director of Partnerships and teacher of Physics at Alleyn’s. Ben leads on engaging staff and pupils with the Alleyn’s partnership programme and believes strongly in encouraging the spirit of opportunity and curiousity.

We believe that partnership programmes – whatever their scale – support our communities, aid social mobility and open up access to our schools. And as our pupils and staff

Alleyn’s Summer School 2022

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Alleyn’s On Magazine.

Published on May 7, 2023 Canon, EOS 5D Mark III Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

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Artist: Charlotte Lattanzio, Year 12 (Extract from full piece) Alleyn’s Summer Show, 2023

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Alleyn’s School is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales. Company No. 09401357 Registered Charity No. 1161864 Registered office: Townley Road, Dulwich, London SE22 8SU Tel. 020 8557 1500