A year in perspective

Well, it's been almost a whole school year now since AIB first wrote to you about how our boarders had found their first week back. Now it's come full circle and we would now like to bring you some of their retrospective thoughts on the academic year 2013/14.

Put simply, we asked our boarders two questions: What was your favourite point of the year? and What are you most looking forward to, or are nervous about, next year?

Alex from Brooke picked out the improvement in his language skills as a high point, while Vova highlighted the "incredibly crazy experiments in Science". All rounder Jonathan from Alfred focused on the musical and specifically the master class given by guitarist Craig Ogden. He says "it has inspired my study of guitar." Not all the best bits were necessarily comfortable times. Terrence enjoyed the beginning of the year the most and particularly remembers how he "almost got lost every day." AIB remember those first tentative and often confusing steps made all the way back in September and look now at what these students have become.

These were very memorable moments and achievements but when AIB read Brabourne boarder Angel's answers, we felt we had to include a lot of it, as it summed up a lot of what boarding here at Ashford is about. Take it away Angel:

"Well, the one things that I enjoyed most this year was getting along well with people from different countries with respectively a large variety of cultures and backgrounds...I found it really enjoyable, meaningful and educational. For me education is not just solely about academic but life and experience. School life for me this year has just been really remarkable and fruitful. I gained loads of knowledge and understanding...and most importantly, getting a much closer relationship with my peers."

To the second question, many of the Year 10s focused on their upcoming GCSE exams and though many were nervous, most said that they were looking forward to the challenge. For Jonathan though it is simply "more of the same please": "I am looking forward to more experiences...to stimulate me and widen my knowledge."

For AIB all the points above just show how special a boarding community we have here in Ashford School. From the prefects, to the school shows (like JC Superstar), to all the amazing concerts, trips (who can forget Chessington in the rain?), activities (like last weeks cookery competition) and sporting fixtures, not to mention the academic performances (Zekai's outstanding UKMT result). All the amazing achievements that we will be celebrating this week, especially at Founders' Day, the boarding community has been at the heart of them, staff and children alike, working together. Not every day has been a wholly positive one, but at least there have been positive elements within each of them.

Over the last few weeks we have said "goodbye" to many of those students, particularly in Years 11 and 13, who have played such pivotal roles in this positive experience. We will miss them all and wish them every success in the future and hope that they remember their time here in Ashford fondly. We will also be saying farewell to two boarding staff members in Mr Forse and Miss Cawardine, both moving to schools in London, who have put so much into making our boarders' lives more comfortable and enjoyable. We will be very sad to see you go (Fun Tuesday's will never be the same without you Miss C.) Take care and good luck!

I will leave the last word from AIB this year to Boarding Captain Bruce, who has already departed for Hong Kong and who has written a little piece for the school magazine. I hope you don't mind us using it for this piece Bruce, but we think that this is what 'Adventures in Boarding' means:

"“Where is Ashford?“ This is the first question I asked when I received the offer from this school. Joy and worry struck me at the same time, as I was worrying about life out of my comfort zone and the happiness to explore new things.

When the time I arrived, I found my worry was not necessary as this school provided me with a warm and well-supported environment. On top of that, as school students, we are given lots of different chances to show what we are capable of doing, such as participating in the Google science fair with help of biology department; working on feasibility of producing anti-malaria rice as an alternative medicine to the third world

Even though this school has high expectations of students in terms of the academic, it doesn’t push students too hard. Our time slots were filled by different extra-curricular activities (such as sports fixtures, fitness training, cooking competitions and more) as well.

After a year staying in boarding, I was given a leadership role as boarding captain and started participating in cooperation with members of staff to manage the boarding community (although I was a troublemaker in school). The challenges that we came across stretched me to my limit and helped me to understand myself more deeply.

Overall, it has been a joy to stay in this school, both as boarder and student."

Thank you Bruce and on behalf of all at AIB and the Ashford School boarding community we wish you all a happy holiday, good luck to 11s-13s withe their exam results and see you all, with some new faces of course, in September.