Brandon Learning Centre: British Education - process, preparation and practicalities

This time of year is bittersweet as our students leave us for their new UK schools. This year, we have students going to Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Downe House, Wycombe Abbey, Oundle, King's Canterbury, Dragon, Tonbridge, St Mary's Calne, Charterhouse, Rugby and many other schools. A few things for our students to think about: 1: New school, new start. You may not have played as big a role as you could in your previous school. Now is the time to join in. 2: Ask questions. It is by asking questions that you can extend your knowledge of a subject or clear up areas of confusion. The more you ask, the more you learn. 3: Don't be afraid to ask for help. There are multiple sources of assistance in your new schools: senior students (mentors/"big sisters") prefects, teachers, your house tutor and your house mistress/master. Don't suffer in silence. 4: Have fun, try everything (even the cabbage!) Good luck, everyone at Brandon is very proud of y

We are all safe at home as the typhoon batters Hong Kong. Instead of spending the day square-eyed in front on the television or immersed in computer games, how about creating some family memories? Ideas... Bake! Scones, biscuits, nothing too complicated. The scent of baking filling the house easily compensates for the greyness outside. Create a scrap book of family pictures, memories and in-jokes. Something to look back on or use as black-mail when boy/girl friends meet the parents. Create a family magazine for Grandparents. Write up news, add holiday pictures, recipes or plans for the new term. Play a board game (avoid Monopoly, the source of explosive arguments in houses across the nation!) Give younger children magazines and blunt scissors. Ask them to cut out animal pictures and stick them all together to make a zoo, fashion pictures to create a show or just anything that catches their eye. Create a family quiz. Everyone makes up 20 questions which can be general kno

School interviews? At any age, the idea of being grilled by a stranger can be daunting. And therein lies the problem; we need to adjust the way that we perceive interviews. An interview is a two way process. Your interviewer wants to find out more about you to see if you are suitable for their school or company. You want to present your skills in a way which is attractive and also want to find out whether the school or company is an environment in which you can thrive. Interviews are conversations: both sides need to take part! Planning ideas. Speak to friends who are currently studying at the school. They are the experts! 1: Think about what you really want to get out of the interview. Why do you want to join this school? 2: Think about what skills and talents the school is looking for 3: Think about what you have to offer 4: Ask yourself: what don't I know about this school? Some questions you will be able to research online or find answers through asking friends.

I found the most heavenly poem today. Short and poignant, it captures the physical effects of loss and the despair of loss. Nothing comes close to the inertia and despair one experiences on losing someone close. In Kenneth Rexroth's translation, this anonymous Six Dynasties poet descibes the destructive effects wrought on the body by the mind I can no longer untangle my hair. I feed on my own flesh in secret. Do you want to measure how much I long for you? Look at my belt, how loose it hands. - Anonymous From One Hunded More Poems from the Chinese Love and the Turning Year - Kenneth Rexroth

Wrong play but my favourite epilogue. The world of the Globe is a very special one; detached from reality allowing you to luxuriate in the glories of Shakespeare. Bliss. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. William Shakespeare From The Tempest , Act 4 Scene 1 To find out more about A Midsummer Night's Dream: http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/a-midsummer-nights-dream-2013?utm_source=hp&utm_medium=customBlock&utm_campaign=Midsummer_hp

Latin mass at Farm Street followed by the most glorious of London spring days reminded me of Gerard Manley Hopkin's luminous poem "Pied Beauty." The poet's sparkling reflections on the visible evidence of God's work is a reminder to glory in imperfections ending in a heartfelt cry of exultation which lingers in the mind after long reading. Heavenly. Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things - For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.