Dean's Blog 'Cows'

(Another one for the DOZ list this week:
‘Oh, can’t I?’ said the driver as she left the car parked on the big yellow drop off signs on the tarmac and under a yellow notice…)


It was a chill, grey, late autumn mist in mid September that spread across the field as though dawn had tried and then given up on lighting the planet this morning, or at least that bit that included Wangen (ZH). There was a group of a dozen and a half cows in the near part of the field looming out of the gloomy morning mist. The cows puzzled me. Normal cows eat grass and flick their tails at the same time. Cunning that. Except when they lie down they do this all day. This seems to be the sole point of cows. These weren’t. Instead, they were standing totally, uncannily still stiffly facing a variety of directions, as though some giant child had just taken them out of his toy cupboard and placed them in a group near the fence. The scene was like the age very young children go through when they play next to rather than play with another child. These were clearly not playing. Presumably unwittingly, they reflected all the horrors of a chill, damp, early Monday morning after a wet weekend in October, which is where I was at.

However, they did get me thinking about something that happened in the Dean’s Office the previous week. A student asked to speak with me about a pending situation that this student could clearly see was most likely to spiral out of control and then cause a very difficult situation out of which this student felt climbing was no option. Reputation would be damaged and college entry threatened. Why? Because teenage patience, dignity, reputation and respect were being threatened to destruction by another student. Since student two was in a younger grade than him, student one knew he would be blamed if there was trouble. He understood the implications and reasons. And this was happening publicly and with increasing frequency. Recent history showed this student that a satisfactory remedy was not on the peer personal menu of student two as all attempts to reason had been rejected. So it was time to seek an adult’s advice. I felt thrilled, of course. Here was the perfect model of a student maturing rapidly and sufficiently proactively to obviate a poor decision. Everything we try to instil in students had been internalised. Appropriate measures had been tried. Sensible alternatives had been considered and then prioritised. One had been decided on independently. Already half a dozen boxes on the IB Learner Profile had been checked. Whichever way I examined this particular model it seemed valid.

‘Yes,’ you are saying. ‘Well, that’s good. But where do the cows come in?’ Well, hang on in there. So the student and I devised a strategy together. (Collaboration is under Communication on the IB Learner Profile). The student examined each stage and each proposal showing wisdom beyond his calendar age. Everyone had to be winners; no one need have a dented ego. Respect must be maintained. Cooperation was the target outcome. Has it worked? Well, there’s no Hollywood ending to this anecdote as it is too early to tell and there are too many behavioural variables. But so far there has been no further incident so we are both confident the tense stage is over for this student.

And the cows? Well, I was coming to them…

Dean's Blog 'The Grey Wall 2.0'

‘An unseasonably chilly rain was slicking and polishing the grey concrete etc. etc.’

Actually, the other day a twelfth grade studentess dropped into my little office in the MB. She had never been there as these students spend most of their lesson time and all of their free time in and around the DSC. ‘I don’t see why you were complaining about your view, Mr D. it’s not that bad. I mean you can see quite a large strip of grass as well as the concrete wall!’ Such positivism really cheered me up as it was clear she meant it. Mind you, she was standing up; when you sit down naturally the window sill as horizon raises itself to cover the lower part of the view and bang goes a heap of my grass. But then you see a little bit of sky, she pointed out. But the positive comment, the ‘glass half full’ attitude, had me reflecting on just this remarkable aspect of teenagers. They will fall about in class till 10.00 am, moaning about lack of sleep and the presence of acute hunger. They will allege that they had a boring evening, too, and that they have a maths test for the third week running, a science lab write-up and a humanities essay all due today, rolling their eyes the while with pantomime drama. Having been shown a suitable lack of sympathy in response, however, (‘Go to bed earlier.’ ‘This is a school, you know.’ etc. which is what they really expected in the first place) they charge off at the sight of their friends to play a noisy version of football that seems to entail kicking the ball as hard as possible over the Red Top fence and into the school drive as often as possible within the time available, part of the thrill being, presumably, whether it bounces on the roof of a car. Or they create a rugby scrum like huddle of gossiping that produces both sudden and random screams of laughter and horror, or exaggerated exclamations of total disbelief that threaten to damage the delicate workings of the adult human’s inner ear. No sign of depression, deathly fatigue or near starvation there. Their experience is limited, protected as it should be. Their experience tells them that life will improve dramatically and radically in a moment as it always has and always did.

But there are so many bunches of kids, as we know, in so many environmentally and socially impoverished places on the planet where their far too extensive, negative experience will tell them that life will not get better, that it will most probably get much worse very soon as it tends to, that help and peace and a cessation of pain or fear or hunger are not even worth considering. You know all this as well as I. (I was in Zimbabwe at the end of March for a few days. On the night the rumour spread that the government had been defeated in the elections in this township the elation and relief were infectious. Three weeks later these same joyful people were being hunted down and abused.)

ICS has an unbroken tradition of making a specific difference to the lives of communities and, through sponsorships, to specific children, since the late ‘60s. And grade 9’s programme for the recent IB MYP Areas of Interaction Activity Week continued, improved, and broadened this tradition. The focus was ‘Children at Risk’. But when this other world is introduced to our world, it is essential (and not so easy) not to produce hopeless feelings of guilt or indignation or despair in our students at the size of the situation. A careful programme of information, films, research, creative writing, pod casts and drama as well as the presentation of valid, possible and available ways to make a difference, had been prepared by the relevant staff. The timetable was flexible so that activities were lasting a morning or a day or even 48 hours. The students’ enthusiasm grew rapidly and the quality of perception in their reflections was impressive. Last week, therefore, grade 9’s location was really rather a wonderful place to be.

The Accidental Death of a Boy in Morning Traffic

That morning had the signs, I guess,
The frosty light refused to grow,
The damp and cold and bitterness
Clung onto pavements white with snow.

Cars stood steaming in the cold
Impatient when the lights turned red;
Drivers occupied with phones,
Distracting children late to bed,

GPS and babies’ cries,
Radio news and texts to send,
Late appointments fixed with lies,
Enough to drive you round the bend.

A car accelerated now,
(The distant traffic lights turned green)
As focus on the phone hid how
A teenage boy in hood and jeans

Had raced his bike across the road.
He did not signal, did not look
He had no lights, no fear, no load
Of bag or books. That’s all it took,

The bike and car will occupy
Too small a space outside the school
Thus turning morning routine rides
To noise and shock and pain so cruel.

Only half awake at eight
A headstrong, happy handsome boy
A boy who knew that he was late,
Seduced by speed, the wind was joy.

That lithe, athletic boy just flew
Across the greasy tarmac, smashed
Against the hood and bounced off stone
As screams and paint and blood and bone

Spilled out to chill the startled air.
Now cars moved on, the buses too,
And no one seemed to see or care
About that scene now out of view.


Nick Darlington