A letter to our Matric Parents On prescribed poetry and life by Dalene Reyburn It is the last Monday night of July and our Head of School, Mike Esterhuysen, has just left. He popped in for five minutes and, as usual, stayed for an hour and a half. At first he refused a cup of coffee, then he had two. I was supposed to be writing end-of-term report comments tonight, but he has put onto a tangent now. After Mike left, I realized just how much I had missed our chats over these past busy weeks. I also had a sense of déjà vu, a feeling that I have had these emotions and feelings before. And I remembered that it was when our eldest son, Adam, was in Matric back in 2007. This year’s Matric Class share many traits with that earlier group: a heady mix of purpose and pointlessness, structure and sloppiness, ambition and prevarication, honest intentions and bewildering gaffes. It is around this time that a father realizes that the last rugby or hockey match is done, that every mother recognizes that her son is doing things for the last time. Every event and ritual carries additional significance because there won’t be another. Even ‘The Bounds’ takes on additional meaning! If your son is like ours, there is emotion in everything that he does now. The reality of his taking his leave of us is upon him. So, I decided to write this letter to our Matric Parents, to let them know how well their sons are doing, to express our confidence in them, to convey our pride in the manner in which they have overcome adversity and disappointment this year. Then, just as I started, I realized that one of my colleagues had done it perfectly back in 2007. This week seven years ago, Dalene Reyburn (one of the truly great teachers with whom I have served) wrote a letter to the school community about her feelings as her first Matric Class at the College were beginning to take their leave. She captures everything I would want to say and I hope that she won’t mind me sharing her letter of July 2007 with our Parents and Boys of 2014. “Lately, I’ve had that min dae feeling, where my Matrics are concerned: their last winter sports season, prelims upon us, twenty-five lessons left after the August holidays. I’ve had cause to think deeply about their tremendous talent and how they will ‘serve therewith [their] Maker’, the triumphs and trials they have faced, their self-perceived invincibility and matchless charm – and what they have meant to me. The world of education is kitted out for young people, and so it should be. It’s all about them: honing their characters, delving into their potential, preparing them for life. Sometimes, however, we need to remember that although we as educators are grownups (sort of), we, like the boys we teach, are organic beings who are constantly growing and learning and changing – like ‘the leaping greenly spirits of trees’. Just as we as educators (hopefully) shape and impact the boys we teach, so they exert their unique influence on our lives. As Tennyson says, ‘I am a part of all that I have met.’ It’s people on people, iron sharpening iron. Our boys walk into our classrooms carrying school bags and iPods and elation and disappointment and fear and fun and stress. And we stand ready with photocopies or Powerpoint or fatigue or excitement or anger or hurt or joy. The curriculum is simply where we meet. For me and my Matrics this year, that common ground has been Wuthering Heights, Antony and Cleopatra, a bit of language here and there, and poetry. I think I’ve taught them enough to prevent sheer panic when they turn to the ‘Seen Poetry’ section of their prelim and final exams. They know that e. e. cummings had an issue with capital letters and that T. S. Elliot had an issue with most things. But below the superficial syllabus stuff, what have they taught me? (Have the ‘ears of my ears’ been awakened and the ‘eyes of my eyes’ been opened?) My Matrics have taught me that teaching is ‘Constantly risking absurdity… balancing on eyebeams above a sea of faces’. They have reminded me to ask forgiveness often, from God and others, when I fall from the ‘high wire of [my] own making’. They have taught me to chill; to give them space and understanding when they are stressed – ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre’ – and when ‘The world is too much with [them].’ They have trained me to look for every opportunity to show love because sometimes in our digital, instant world, ‘For this, for everything, we are out of tune.’ They have challenged me to think, prepare, question, laugh and pray more – and not to ‘lay waste [my] powers.’ They have shown me that everyone has a different starting point in life, and a different reason to ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ They have reinforced for me the value of wisdom, and of continually choosing to do the next right thing, and of watching and listening for ‘The notion of some infinitely gentle / infinitely suffering thing’ because every soul in the classroom – theirs or mine – at some point is ‘stretched tight across the skies… Or trampled by insistent feet.’ Part of my learning has been storing memories of…bags being flipped, boys leaving through the window rather than the door… The recollections are endless. Indeed, beneath the superficial syllabus stuff, we have become allies and friends. I am yet to experience motherhood. However, they tell me that being a Mom is like watching your heart walking around in someone else’s body. (Dalene left us in 2011 to become a fulltime mother to her two sons!) My prayer for these Matrics as they prepare to close their St Alban’s chapter is that they will determine to ‘drink life to the lees’, that they will learn that ‘all experience is an arch wherethro’ gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move,’ and that they will see ‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!’ I hope they realise that ‘something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done’, and that they will finish strong – ‘strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’” Your boys will be coming home to you at the end of next week. Prelims will be over, the last school holiday upon them, another “last”. Heaven knows this has not been a trouble-free and easy year, but there is something essentially good and kind and proper about the men in our Class of 2014. This will be their last school holiday, their last rest before the final push through to the end. Love them, let them rest a bit, give them courage and overlook their minor faults awhile. With love and support and prayer, these boy-men can finish more strongly than they can imagine. God Bless (and thank you, Dalene). Tom Hamilton HEADMASTER
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 14:11:02 +0000
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