Rhubarb Issue 12: November 2023

ST EDWARD’S

WARDEN’S WELCOME

Alastair Chirnside

A t the start of every term I preach in Chapel, and my theme for the academic year which started in September was friendship. Leavers take many things from their time at Teddies: examination grades for university admission and for their first job applications; lessons from the co-curriculum about talent and practice, pressure and performance; experiences of community from their boarding houses and from their year groups which help them to chart their social course through life. All those grades, lessons and experiences are important, but it is the friendships from their time at school which last longest, which take them furthest and which matter most for them to lead happy and fulfilling lives.

WARDEN’S WELCOME

Alastair Chirnside

Friendship comes from shared experience, and it is the richness of that experience in the busyness and intensity of life at Teddies that makes the School the perfect proving ground for it. From the Warden’s House, I can see friendship every day in the Quad: pupils walking and talking together about ideas and interests, lessons and activities, people and events. I can feel it in the Common Room, in the staff rooms of the departments, at the dinners and drinks parties which Zannah and I host for all staff there is a sense of togetherness which is very special, even unique.

School makes friendship easier: pupils and staff are here all the time, bound together by shared experience every day. Beyond school, it gets harder: in the busyness of our lives, it is easy to lose touch with our friends and with the past which we share with them.That is why I have been delighted to welcome so many of you back to Teddies for OSE events, for Special Gaudy, for private visits – some of you regular visitors, others returning after absences of more than thirty years. Every invitation seems to bring more OSE back to the School. It is also why we have all been so pleased to see the steady increase in the number of OSE parents registering their children to come to the School.

Friendship is the most important lesson to learn at school and it has been learnt well for generations at Teddies.

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