Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
Head's End of Term Message
Preparatory | Senior School | Sixth Form
09 July 2021
As we reach the end of term and the last Friday Headlines for a while, I wanted to express my gratitude to the staff of EHS for all their hard work, and to the girls for their endless energy and enthusiasm. This dedication, determination and commitment to the school has carried us to the end of a summer term that sparkled and fizzed. The whole school enjoyed sports days, picnics, activity days, House events and a fabulous outside live performance from the newly formed ‘EHS Band’. At the end of EHS Fest the girls were loudly singing ‘football’s coming home’ and lo and behold it may very well do so!
We have all lost so much in the last year, but we have never let our community spirit disappear, and seeing the whole school on the playing fields in the last few days of term enjoying being outside and together was incredibly uplifting.
On the final day of term in our Service of Thanksgiving, Mrs Lindsay Lucas, the Chair of the Old Girls’ Association, spoke movingly to the whole school, including our Year 13s who returned to receive their Old Girl EHS brooches, about why EHS embeds itself in our hearts and never really lets you go. Mrs Lucas is testament to this herself, having been a pupil, parent and teacher at EHS over the last 40 years.
The spirit of EHS is embodied perfectly in the poem below written by Lujayn Ismail, a Year 12 student and our Poet Laureate, for the Service of Thanksgiving. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed hearing it on Wednesday. I wish you all a restful and enjoyable summer.
A New Year
2020,
The fires, the floods,
The virus, the misunderstood fighting for their voices to be heard.
2021,
A new year,
But restrictions, regulations, irritation and frustration filled our lives once again.
Things we’d much rather forget,
Leave behind,
And yet, if we stop
And think of all that’s happened,
Amongst all the devastation, there’s more to appreciate than ever imagined.
Our lives are books.
Each story; a chapter.
Some sad, some exciting,
Others so terrifying you wish the author had stopped writing,
But how to miss out words and expect to understand the sentence?
Instead,
We live through each chapter in order to grow and learn resilience.
It was the fires, the floods, the virus, the misunderstood, the restrictions, regulations, irritation and
Frustration that placed us on the same ground.
So when we stop to look around,
We see unity.
We can thank the calamity for giving us a commonality,
For placing hand in hand,
And so together,
We face new opportunity.
