Category: Woodbridge News
On Wednesday we were privileged to welcome Monty Halls to come to speak to Years 6-12 about the importance of developing leadership skills in young people. Monty is a former marine who went on to do a Marine Biology degree and is best known for his three BBC2 series ‘Great Escapes’, where he lived on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland with his dog Reuben. He also presented the multi-award winning series ‘Great Barrier Reef’.
Monty spoke about his life and career, including working with Nelson Mandela for a year, sleeping in a scorpion filled cave and being attacked by a Tiger shark!
However, his main focus was on how important it is for all young people to received leadership training. He told the students how, in a survey of over 400 top business leaders, over 90% felt leadership should be formally developed at school. His key message was that everyone has the capacity to lead and he challenged the archetypal image of a leader as a dominant ‘alpha’ personality but instead asked students to think about how there are very different approaches to effective leadership.
At Woodbridge School we want all our students to leave feeling they have the capacity to lead so we are looking to pilot a leadership course, developed with Monty Halls and various other independent schools, to help develop this confidence.
Monty was effusive at the end of the day:
“It was my great pleasure to visit Woodbridge to speak to the students about the importance of their own leadership development. The school is showing real drive and initiative to make sure that leadership – such a crucial life skill – is introduced to all students. Woodbridge is very much at the vanguard of creating meaningful, progressive, accredited leadership training for every young person that attends the school, and I look forward very much to working with them (and indeed learning from them) in the future.”
Our pupils found this talk an enlightening experience:
“I found it extremely useful listening to someone who has taken the same career path that I am hoping to travel on”
Matthew Sutton
“It was encouraging to discover that someone who had such little military experience was so successful in his field”
Phoebe Cook
“Varied as our aims and goals were, he was a fascinating and personable man with words of wisdom for everyone”
Gabby Zins
“He is an inspiring man who definitely helped me realise that leadership can come in many forms and that our path of life is not set in stone”
Abi Crane
“It was very interesting to hear about his experiences in his field because he talked to us as equals”
Matthew Bye
“I found it a truly enlightening experience. It was a great opportunity to learn not only more about leadership, but also what we can expect going into a life in the armed forces and general life after school- a very worthwhile experience!”
David Spray
“I enjoyed talking to Monty and learning about his own life through the armed forces and university. It has definitely give me a good idea what to expect in the future”
George Cory
This term, in PSHE, the Reception children are thinking about their emotions and how to cope with feeling sad, happy, worried, excited etc. Biscuit and Eileen are visiting each week to tell stories and talk to the children about their feelings. Today the children listened carefully to Biscuit as she told them how she had once broken her Mum’s best vase and how worried she had been. They had lots of ideas about what she should do.
Emily Hauser in conversation
Thursday 28 January, 7.30pm
Woodbridge Library
‘For the Most Beautiful’ is a brilliant debut novel, re-imagining Homer’s ‘Iliad’ from the perspective of the women who were there.
The author is Emily Hauser who grew up in Woodbridge, studied in Cambridge under Mary Beard and is now pursuing a PhD at Yale University. In her brief visit home from the USA, Emily will be visiting us to talk about her novel. Come and meet her!
Tickets £5 with refreshments. Tel: 01394 388890
Emily will also be visiting the school on the same day to talk to our Classics students in Y10 and above.
Many congratulations to Y7 Tobias Juszt who was part of the IES (Ipswich East Suffolk) Hockey U14 Boys’ Team that won the Suffolk Youth League Championships, earning their Gold Medals after a long and successful season. Congratulations also to Y9s Oliver Juszt and Alex Weir-Simmons who have made it into the Suffolk County Hockey squad for the second year running and have even been asked to play up a year, joining the U15s.
Mozart’s Divertimento in F offered a charmingly crisp opening to an evening of rich and passionate music making. The precision of Mrs Carlson’s Chamber Orchestra, and the piece’s interesting tricks and turns, made for attentive listening – Mozart experimenting a little, I thought, and very enjoyably so. It paved the way for ‘bigger’ works with the Symphony Orchestra under Mr Penny’s baton. Beethoven’s Pastoral – the magnificent first movement – was… magnificent. How brave for a school orchestra to test itself on such grand yet familiar music: how well our musicians rose to the challenge. It was simply beautiful. Carwithen’s Suffolk Suite offered something a little more rustic, simple, almost frivolous and gambolling, but nonetheless richly entertaining: the discovery that the music had started life accompanying a film about East Anglia made perfect sense. Evita’s main themes are well known; the evocation of Argentinian hurly-burly, heat and passion in the lesser known melodies was if anything even more striking than the occasional realisations of ‘Don’t cry for me’. Terrific, sweeping music to end a wonderfully natural – pastoral – trio of pieces.
And then Faure’s Requiem: reflective; peaceful; deeply dramatic but contained and almost introspective. Owen Butcher, Rhiannon Humphreys and Charlie Green each added magnificently to the landscape of the piece with truly beautiful, innocent solos – clear, floating voices so well suited to the clean emotions of a piece unfettered by the judgmental nature of many of the other well-known Requiems; and Harrison Cole as organist added his own stunningly impressive contribution. Outstanding. Who could not be moved? Singing, I had been a-tingle throughout; the audience was the same, I have no doubt. Many congratulations Mr Penny, Mrs Carlson, the Choral Society and the Orchestras for a wonderful evening.
It was an unadulterated pleasure to attend our extraordinary run of concerts last November and December, from the intimate lunchtime recitals to the spectacular orchestras and choral society. And the last concert of all was as fine as any: the Bands put on a wonderful show, full of seasonal joy and virtuosic energy.
St John’s played excellent host first to Mr Shepherd’s Swing Band, reprising some of its top numbers from the recent Felixstowe excursion. Fantastic! Slick, quick and ‘terrifick’. The Band has a unity to it at the moment as fine as at any time in its distinguished history. The performance set the tone for what was to come, as the smaller ensembles took to the stage: clarinets, recorders, brass, saxophones, trombones, and to round off a sumptuous first half, the Percussion Ensemble with its typically and mesmerizingly hypnotic… (is that a tautology? Surely I am allowed one in Advent?) … Mr-Hubbard-arrangements. Following the themes from one player to another; the interplay and the interweaving; it’s a visual delight as much as an auditory one.
And then after a delightfully convivial interval over mulled apple juice, we were back in our seats for Mr Hubbard’s Concert Band which celebrated and remembered Mr Stafford both through the arrangements it played, the carols it led (good heavens, Mr Hubbard… what a voice you have to inspire your audience to sing back), and the stellar performance it put in.
This was a sparkling evening, and a sparkling conclusion to a term of music making in concert. Our enormous thanks to go everyone in the music department, staff and pupils alike, for all that they have achieved under Mr Penny’s fine leadership and in such difficult circumstances this term. Mr Stafford would have been very proud.
All the Queen’s House children enjoyed a fabulous Christmas party complete with musical statues, pass the parcel and a dance competition that would have impressed the Strictly Come Dancing judges! The children paired up with a friend and pirouetted, waltzed and twirled their way around the hall to festive music and all dressed in their best party outfits. This was followed by a sumptuous tea party; tables groaning with sandwiches, cakes, flapjacks, sausages, crisps and crudités. It wasn’t long before bells could be heard and Santa appeared bearing gifts for each child. The children were so polite and grateful and even offered Santa some carrot sticks for his reindeer! Merry Christmas.
