On October 10th 2014, Avanti Schools Trust hosted its third annual conference. This was held at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire and was attended by teaching staff, senior school leaders, school governors and a number of Avanti ‘friends of the family’.
Andrea Kahn, Head of Philosophy, Religion & Ethics at Avanti House, invited to speak at the event, was posed the question: Why Avanti? We felt inspired to share the answer.
[hr]
When I was invited to speak today by Usha Sahni on ‘Why Avanti?’ my first thoughts were how was I going to fit everything I was going to say into a few short minutes! Immediately my mind went back to my interview in May 2013 at the Harrow Teachers Centre. It was there that I first caught a glimpse of what made Avanti House special.
The first thing I learnt is it’s not the building that makes a school special – it is quite clearly the people! From the very first moment I walked in it was evident that this was a special school; a school different from others I had ever worked in or had visited; quite simply it was unique. The staff were friendly, warm, embracing and so welcoming, and the pupils a delight. How strange that I even enjoyed my observation lesson, teaching the first year group about equality and re-enacting Guru Gobind Singh and the formation of the Khalsa, plus other activities, in a science lab. I’d never taught PRE in a lab before and actually funnily enough, the space was bigger than my classroom now! Being grilled by 15 pupils in a panel interview was far harder than my actual interview. The pupils were highly intelligent and hard task masters. I was grilled on such things as ‘why I was a PRE teacher’, ‘why did I apply for the school’ and ‘why did I think I should work at Avanti House’. After all the tasks I had to endure, by the end I was exhausted but was left with the overwhelming feeling that I was desperate to be a part of this. Later that day my dream came true and I was offered the post of Head of Ethics (as it was called then). I screamed with joy down the phone at the then principal who must have thought I was crazy; I was also standing in a street at a time and unaware of the strange glances until afterwards!
So why my reaction, after reflecting on this I was sure that I had stumbled across something different. I can reflect that what I saw before my eyes in a few short hours was an enticing as well as compelling vision which were the three pillars of the school and the trust as a whole in operation. The educational excellence of intelligent and thought provoking contributions in my lesson as well as during the pupil panel, the character formation as displayed with how the pupils welcomed me, their politeness and demeanour was amazing, during the communal lunch the interaction and warm relationships with teachers was evident, and the spiritual insight underpinned by the 6 values was clearly on display. I also loved and was surprised that there were no bells between lessons and pupils walked serenely to lessons. If I recall due to my enthusiasm, the end of my lesson was a little hurried as I was so used to listening out for the bell and of course it never came.
As well as the warm welcome, the school offered me a unique opportunity to utilise all of my skills and experience as well as use them!
As some of you might know for 13 years my career was in marketing, a direct marketing professional and a Communications leader, however my dream was at some point to go back to my roots and train to be a teacher in PRE which I subsequently did. The subject was my passion all through school and my specialist subject at A’level as well as at University was Hinduism. How perfect was it to join a school, an all through free school which was at that time less than a year old where I could be encouraged to market the school to parents, develop the PRE curriculum and ethos, embed it as well as use my Comparative Religion degree and teach Hinduism all day! Was this too good to be true?
No was the answer and from day 1 from the beginning of last September I was not disappointed! The last year has been exciting, hard work but amazing. The ethos of the school was clear to me from the first day; however it took time to really appreciate it. Although I am Head of PRE it soon became evident that the ethos and values are not just taught in our PRE lessons – the school is immersed with them. The pupils were embodying our values and demonstrating, for example, respect, courage and gratitude on a daily basis (as well as the others!). I am often thanked by pupils for my lessons and pupils are caring even yesterday some pupils came up to me asking how I was as they remembered I had a cold last week and didn’t feel too well. Two days ago a pupil came up to me and offered to clear my plate from lunch, only yesterday a pupil came up to me at the end of a lesson asking for advice in how to deal with a difficult situation. At Avanti House we really do believe as well as demonstrate that every child does matter indeed such is this a focus that our Head of Years weekly select a pupil as a ‘butterfly’ someone that for various reasons needs some special focus even if it’s just for us to say hi and smile!
Since the end of last year’s Autumn term I’ve also enjoyed compiling the school newsletter which also celebrates our pupil’s achievements throughout each half term.
The more you are at Avanti House the more you become immersed in the pillars as well as values of the school. I am going to now talk about a few personal highlights which I feel illustrate why I love the school as well as illustrating some of our values and pillars in operation.
I am going to start with Spiritual insight. Well – where can I start? At Avanti one of the first things I learned was everyone has to be flexible in a whole variety of areas! Whilst I am not of the faith or the tradition I feel I have embraced the spiritual side in ways I never ever could have imagined. I have had the honour of meditating (or trying to learn with three deep breaths) with His Grace Sruti Dharma Das, he also tied a black protection band around my wrist which I wore for months until it finally fell off this Summer. I was delighted to regularly sit round the table with head teachers as well as with Nitesh and Graham Schweig – a fellow comparative religionist as well other experts in pedagogy, Hindu philosophy as well as experts on the Chaitanya tradition and discuss as well as develop a PRE curriculum for our schools as well as for the DfE. I have developed great working relationships with these people and Usha and I now also share tea making responsibilities and Graham (or Garuda as he’s commonly called) and I could talk for hours on our shared interest in all things linked to Comparative religion, I even loved listening to him so much I purchased a copy of his translation of the Bhagavad Gita which I now proudly display in my classroom.
A month after joining, I also attended our Yajna ceremony which was spiritually uplifting and I loved the fact that the school, teachers and pupils were being protected. I’ve also loved celebrating festivals at the school where not only do we celebrate a wide range of festivals but we see our wonderful pupils participate and do readings as well as sing, play instruments and dance. I guess what my experience has shown me is the lack of barriers and hierarchy and that everyone can get involved in a wide range of activities no matter what their belief. The spiritual side of our school was also highly commended in our recent Ofsted report that all staff were extremely proud of.
I have definitely developed my character – not just due to the pupils who we nurture but the wonderful staff and all of my close friends and family here at Avanti. When I first joined and was told ‘welcome to the family’ I must admit it I thought it a little clichéd and cheesy but I had to eat my words! My colleagues are the very best people I have ever worked with; we are a close team and last year, with DFE visits and Ofsted plus all the demands of work in setting up a new school, each and every one of us worked together as a team. I lost count of the number of late night texts we’d send each other when we had tight deadlines, or hugs of support when we were tired or simply swapping duties or just a smile and some chocolate. I came to realise this was not just a job – it was much, much more than that. So much so that when we are not at work and its holiday time I get withdrawal symptoms and miss them!
When we had Ofsted, the school did not feel any different from usual as we are used to working hard and achieving things in incredibly quick deadlines but unlike previous inspections I had participated in this was different, as when we were being observed it really felt that it wasn’t about us as individuals but not letting anyone in the team down and showcasing all the wonderful work of our school as well as its educational excellence.
As I said at the start there is so much to talk about but not enough time. I asked some of our pupils two questions: ‘why Avanti?’ and ‘why (or what) values at Avanti are important to you or the school?’ I’d like to share a few responses with you which highlight all that has been achieved in two short years as well as reinforcing ‘why Avanti for me’.
[quote]What I like about PRE lessons is that we discuss our thoughts and doubts as a class. We have so much fun and the work that we do is very helpful. One of the values that is important to me is sharing, because you need to share your feelings and thoughts with other people.[/quote]
[quote]I came to Avanti House because the school was fresh and new – the school had a chance to go anywhere it wanted. I took a risk – I did not want my education to be like an experiment but the people running the operation of building a great school were more than capable.[/quote]
[quote]Because there is no wall built between teachers and pupils, we come together as Avanti. The values that we uphold are values we carry for life.[/quote]
[quote]I have learnt from the values that your character is not judged by how intelligent you are its about being a good person altogether. You may be very clever but if you are a kind person you are a better human being.[/quote]
[quote]In Avanti House one of our main values is respect, at Avanti House we all respect each other and we learn how to respect ourselves.[/quote]
Thank you for listening.
Andrea Kahn
Head of Philosophy, Religion & Ethics – Avanti House School
