Headmaster’s Notes: It’s always darkest before the dawn but we will come back home soon.

27th April 20

It’s always darkest before the dawn but we will come back home soon.

A very warm welcome to the Summer Term! For years we have read and heard, and we have never been more than a sentence away from the word ‘online’: online teaching, online learning, online school; the future’s golden rule. One week into our Summer Term learning programme, we have already accrued well over 50,000 minutes of Zoom teaching across the school with over 2,700 accrued participants. And this is our now, using every ounce of our know-how for reading, writing and talking together, creating, contemplating, exploring together; we’re even keeping our bodies fit, making the very best of it and taking our time to thank those that are making such a positive contribution across our Prince’s Mead Community.

You only know what you have got when it is taken away. But we smile at the idea that we will back soon. This will pass. Its persistence is unknown but, with the efforts of the world as well as our own, before long we will be enjoying the sight of each other; the sounds of singing from the Mirror Room, the smell of that fresh clean forest air in Grey’s Wood, that wonderful tree blossom, the sound of laughter down the corridors, the taste of freedoms that we have given up for this challenge we share. Never have we all looked forward to normal so much and, although that normal may be slightly changed, however life comes to be arranged, we will still be Prince’s Mead. This will end. The world will mend. It’s always darkest before the dawn but we will come back home soon.

Peter Thacker, Headmaster