Presented by Head of School, Abigail Jessop and Deputy Head of School, Laurie Fisher at the
Leavers’ Service held in the Chapel on Tuesday 5th July 2016
.
This is our vote of thanks. But what is a vote of thanks?
It’s a message of appreciation for those who give us inspiration and support our aspirations,
It’s a speech of gratitude
Aimed at those who give us new ideas and concepts which help us expand and grow.
We’ve thanked the guest speakers from Speech Days gone by
So isn’t it time to thank those who help us from day to day
Those who inspire us to learn, aim high and achieve
Teachers, this one’s for you!
It’s for you who have taught us how to dissect fish
It’s for you who have taught us that more than one exclamation mark is vulgar
And that rhythm has your two hips moving
It’s for you who tell us to pack up and push off at the end of the lesson
Yet will patiently stay behind to explain algebra for a further five minutes.
It’s for you who emphasise the importance of remembering to RTQ
And mostly manage to endure our spilling of chemicals and breaking of flasks, tubes and glasses
It’s for you who tell us ‘only you can do the reading’
And give us the big heavy text books to lug around school
And for you who gave us the memory of a certain guy feeding his leeches at the front of a classroom
It’s for the teacher who reminds us to ‘always stick to the spec’
And gives the best tellings-off to immature Year 8s
It’s for you who while demonstrating centripetal force proceeded to douse us and our books in water,
and while showing different frequencies proved that teenagers have the ability to hear higher pitches with total clarity
It’s for you who have engrained in us the greetings and farewells in German
And who enable us to laugh at our mistakes in French when we want to say “we’re excited”
It’s for you who got a whole group of Year 7s dancing
And for you who got 50 Sixth Formers competitive over Benchball
This is for the form tutors we’ve had,
She who became form tutor to a whole year group of Year 7s;
Someone who taught us the very important life lesson of not shooting the messenger
and has continued to support us all up the school
This is a thank you to the form tutor who gave us the useful advice to ‘stay away from boys’ although the advice has
somewhat changed recently to add the afterword; ‘apart from nice boys like Jacob and Oliver’
This is for our Sixth Form tutors who have seen us through the toughest two years so far, personal statement after
personal statement, after personal statement; yet kept us
all feeling positive with their unfailing support, and
encouraging us to feel excited for the next stage in our
lives
So this is a vote of thanks for all you teachers for giving
us memories of language baseball, cheerleading lifts,
house events, fashion shows, art exhibitions, music
concerts, drama productions, assemblies, appeals
days, a lunchtime with both salmon and chicken pie and
all the little things that make a place of growing and
learning so memorable.
So teachers this is a big, fat, wholesome vote of thanks
for you.
Thank you
8
2016 Leavers’ Service – Ode to the Teachers
Class of 2016
