The View from Caldecote Towers

The view from Caldecote presently is distinctly festive. On successive days last week I attended the Junior Drama Evening, the Rose Garden Concert and Sports Day. I was struck by the pupils’ confidence at each event, but I should not have been surprised. Individual excellence raises the standard achieved by and supports less experienced and expert participants in ensemble work in music and drama. Entering an event at Sports Day earns points for the pupils’ house and is valued by his or her peers. Every comment I heard at Sports Day on a participants’ performance was encouraging and generous.

Immanuel pupils have many opportunities to present to an audience. These include the Year 11 pre-GCSE presentation and the Upper Sixth Leavers’ Assembly. Quite properly, the Leavers’ Assembly is the grander event, but the Year 11 presentation is no less enjoyable. At both there is a winning combination of high seriousness and schoolchild humour.

At the Year 11 Presentation Hana Baderman’s and Alexandra Dangoor’s reflections on the subject Consumerism: is it ever enough? and Harry Levene’s answer to the question 'Why mankind needs religion' were framed by the Year 11 girls’ subtly exaggerated depiction of their daily routine and the boys’ participation in Zach Margolin’s unforgettable film of their annual Hit the Crossbar football competition, each piece being in its gender specific way a masterly depiction of the attitudes which make dealing with sixteen year-olds simultaneously exasperating and hilarious. The emotional charge at the Year 11 event was deepened by Sara Marshall’s Beatles saxophone medley and Adam Christie’s singing of Smile. 

The currents of feeling at the Leavers’ Assembly are deep. It is impossible to be unmoved by readings from works that pull strongly on our feelings in the way that Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, (read by Sarah Davis), John Donne’s Meditation XV11, (read by Samuel Kennard), and John Masefield’s Sea Fever, (read by Natasha Rosenfeld), do. Benjamin Winton’s sensitive guitar solo added to the play of feeling. The contrast between Joanna Tamman’s diary of her Israel Trip with her recollections of the Poland Trip three years later was most moving. Humour came in the form of an exceptionally accomplished film, Our Sporting Life, made by Nicholas Goldstein, Victoria Kahn and Joshua Lipschitz, which celebrated the modest starting-point in terms of fitness and stamina of the Immanuel pupil on his or her arrival at the school.

A third occasion at which pupils presented was the Shevat Achim Assembly in the course of which they reviewed the work of the pupils’ charity committee this year. Shoshana Goldstein spoke eloquently about the importance of charity in Judaism. Samuel Kennard, David Gee and Daniel Dangoor told the pupils how the £27,000 plus they have raised for charity this year has been distributed; Nathan Pomerance described the practical help he gives to the Penniwells Riding for the Disabled Centre; Hannah Sharron shared her experiences of the Alan Sennit Leadership Programme; speakers from the Watford New Hope Trust, which Shevat Achim has supported for four years now, explained the nature and scope of the help they give the homeless and Matt Travers from Maccabi GB thanked Immanuel for its involvement in the Fun Run that had taken place two days before.    

At each of the events I have written about I felt immensely proud of the pupils and of the supportive culture which they have created together with the staff, both teaching and non-teaching.