Dear Parents and Guardians,

We have successfully completed a week of remote learning. The boys have been brilliant and have adjusted to this new landscape quickly and (mostly!) productively. The way staff teach, and the way the boys engage, is continuing to evolve as we anticipated. I have had to adapt to teach my Year 9 PRS classes to provide varying experiences and take boys off the screen where possible as well as help them engage with their peers through the breakout rooms.

It’s been really gratifying to see positivity and creativity emerging at this strange time – from both the boys and staff. There are too many examples to mention but a few notables include:

• Mentor meetings in House coloured t-shirts
• Online Chess tournaments and sports sessions
• Mr Black’s bed hop challenge – and seeing the boys doing it on Channel 7’s Sunrise
• Our 1^st XVI and their Instagram page
• Videos from boys showing “a day in the life in isolation”, many of them guaranteed to make you smile.

These great initiatives are keeping the boys motivated and strengthening our sense of community.

We are constantly working on ways to both build on the learning experience and bring things like special assemblies and the Easter service to the boys. Tomorrow, our Summer Sport Assembly will take a different format and I hope you will enjoy its various elements, which will be found on the Stanmore Spaces page.

I would also like to thank you for the support you have shown the College and your boys during these unprecedented times. We will send another survey link to you next Thursday and would appreciate your feedback. Over the holidays we will review what we are doing across the classes as well as our daily timetable structure.

In closing I would like to share the Serenity Prayer adapted from a prayer by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.