Best of times - worst of times?

By Guy Ayling, Headmaster, Mount Kelly

This has in many ways be a tumultuous year. The pandemic cleaved it in two, descending like a misty veil, obscuring the past and separating us from our usual touchstones.

Reviewing the year, we might be reminded of the well-known opening words from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. Completing the introduction might tempt us down the rabbit-hole of comparison, but it is not beyond reason to suggest that we have this year experienced something as significant and seismic as the subject of Dickens’ masterpiece.

It would be easy to say the best times came before the pandemic and the worst after the lockdown was announced. Certainly, the first half of the year was full of the ‘best of times’; joyous activity and achievement, crowned just as the virus was enveloping the nation, by Mount Kelly victories in the Arena League swimming and Choir of the Year competition. And certainly, the second half had plenty to suggest the ‘worst of times’; riven with insecurity and anxiety, most keenly felt by those taking public examinations and our oldest pupils being cruelly robbed of final rites of passage that until now we have all taken for granted.

This dichotomy between best and worst, on either side of the veil, is neat but misleading. In fact, it has been during the worst time of lockdown, or rather in the collective response, that we may have seen the very best of Mount Kelly. Staff created a remote learning programme in just days, but more impressively adapted constantly to the unanticipated demands of a medium never explored at teacher training college; pupils found unmined reserves of application and undoubtedly many stood more on their own feet than ever before, exposing in the process a steel that older generations claim exclusively for their own; and while all this was going on, parents rallied to the support not only of their children, but the school itself.

It is often at the times of greatest stress we discover who we really are and what we can do. We have at a dark moment in our history affirmed our values as a school community, and felt the boundless power of kindness and compassion; we have understood, as never before, light-footedness, creativity and innovation, and when the time is right, the importance of acting swiftly and with courage. We have learned how we respond to challenges beyond our control is utterly within our control, and that the decision to hold firm or give ground is only ours to make. We have lived Machado’s words that ‘there is no path, paths are made by walking’, and have taken hope in the revelation that what troubled us yesterday rarely comes to pass when a new day dawns.