From the Principal #72
6th March 20
C S Lewis, the great novelist and poet best known for his fictional work The Chronicles of Narnia, once wrote:
‘Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.’
And yesterday saw literature come to life at DLD when we celebrated World Book Day. The theme was ‘woke’ which resonates well with our community who continue to be aware of social justice issues around the globe, and ‘The Ten Books that Changed the World’ exhibition in the Atrium reflects just that. Russell Frost from the Hooksmith press, was on hand to show our students how books were printed some 150 years ago – we have come a long way since then. With our Library resources growing and our Wellbeing Ambassador, Victoria Lowe, advocating the benefits of reading from a wellbeing perspective, reading is vital for the soul and events such as these can only encourage our students to pick up a book and become immersed in their own imagination – do please encourage them to do so.
To say it’s been a busy week is an understatement – the students have been preparing and sitting their Milestone Tests 3 this week; the football team taking on Ashbourne in the League (we play Mill Hill tomorrow) and the basketball team at the mighty KCS; work on the Wellbeing Garden and sports area is underway; we have had delegates from the Houses of Parliament undertake training at DLD and I had the honour of speaking to over 200 delegates at the British Boarding Schools’ Workshop in London about our ground-breaking urban boarding concept.
Tom and I met with our boarders this morning (we will be meeting with the whole school next week) to remind them of the precautionary measures that DLD is taking to mitigate the coronavirus issue. I have been impressed at our students’ maturity, response and cooperation during this challenging time and I hope as a community, we continue to remain calm and display those core DLD values of tolerance, respect and kindness, which Aslan, who appears in all of C S Lewis’s seven chronicles of the series, did.
