A year ago to the day, as we completed our first full week of the autumn term, I was interviewed by a couple of our Lower III students. The questions they posed were wide ranging – an opportunity for others to get to know me and for me to share my values.
One such question inquired who I would invite around the table at a dinner party – my choice was Michelle Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Beyonce and Helen Sharman. The range of personalities and life experiences would surely make for an entertaining evening!
And so a year on, it has been an utter delight and yet somewhat surreal to have shared afternoon tea at The Abbey with Helen Sharman CMG OBE herself. It was an honour for The “Girl from Mars” to visit our school today and meet with students from both our Junior and Senior Schools. Her talks were inspirational – insights into her ambitions and the extraordinary world of space exploration; her story one of dedication to intensive training requirements, resilience as the programme was almost cancelled due to financial constraints and a willingness to learn a foreign language in order to closely collaborate with her Soviet colleagues. Her tasks on the eight-day Soyuz TM-12 mission at the Mir space station included medical and agricultural tests, photographing the British Isles and even connecting with British school children via an amateur radio!
Helen broke several records by orbiting planet Earth 30 years ago: the first British astronaut, the first British person in space and indeed, the first European woman in space. We could have invited no special guest more fitting to honour today’s live opening of our Junior School’s wonderful SPACE project. This building development has given us light-filled flexible learning spaces from our new front reception area through to a number of new and remodelled classrooms. Each of these spaces was designed with our students’ ideas at their heart – from how the rooms would work, to the names they were given. And this afternoon, it felt apt for Helen and all those guests who joined us to celebrate today’s milestone, to enjoy the wonders of robotics in our Fab Lab, podcasting from our Computing Suite, the melodic sounds of our Chamber Choir wafting from The Space and student-led scientific inquiry in our Science Lab.
Our SPACE project connects with the launch of a year-long STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths)-based challenge for The Abbey’s Junior School students, providing an exciting opportunity for open-ended problem-solving fuelled by individual curiosity, collaborative research and critical thought. Through this project, we emphasise our school’s ethos of finding answers through discovery, igniting and nurturing scientific passion and pursuing deeper understanding of conceptual ideas. Helen’s experience epitomises our continued commitment to encourage all our students to aim high, break barriers and achieve their wonderful potential. Or in the words of Norman Vincent Peale, to “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
Nisha Kaura, Head of the Junior School