Bryony's Blog

Our guest speaker at Speech Night last year was Bryony Rheam, an old girl of this school and in her own right, an author.  Her address on ‘Reading’ was so thought provoking that we have decided to reproduce the relevant sections in two parts in The Shrike’s Call.  The first of these follows : – “John and I worked in Zambia for seven years at two international schools.   They are run very differently to Zimbabwean schools and are marked by a general laxity in manners and demeanour and an attitude of ‘if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it.’  All this leads to, I’m afraid, is an atmosphere of boredom and apathy.  And, if the pupils are difficult to motivate, the parents are worse!  They can’t pick their children up after 3, they can’t help with play costumes and they feel that events like sports day should take place during school hours so they don’t have to give up a Saturday morning once a year. Personally,I’m tired of pandering to the particular whims of pupils and par

When I first began teaching fifteen years ago, the school where I worked was not particularly interested in special needs teaching or differentiating between students in a class.  I had a small group of boys that I would take for remedial lessons every week and that was the extent of the help given to them.  Some of these pupils had an educational psychologist's report and were deemed dyslexic, but not much notice was taken by the school - which is not to say that their conditions were ignored, they just weren't given much emphasis and no one was excused from doing anything because of their difficulty. Some educationalists take umbrage at this way of doing things.  The last twenty or so years have seen a considerable change in the way in which learning difficulties are viewed.  Students taking the University of Cambridge's examinations can apply to have a reader (someone who reads the questions out aloud) or a scribe (someone who writes the answers down on instruction

I recently paid a visit to Ndola Public Library, a rather shabby looking establishment on Independence Way (no irony lost there).   I expected to find little in the way of books   - perhaps a few paperbacks in much need of repair, or maybe even no books at all.   I wouldn’t have been surprised if it hadn’t been turned into one of the ubiquitous Internet cafes I see round town, or a cell phone shop, full of beautiful, but blank, shop assistants who’d stare at me in confused amazement if I’d ask where the books were.                   Instead, I entered a place of complete and utter quiet.   The atmosphere was one of studious occupation:   all the tables were taken with people doing research and the shelves were full of books.   A closer look revealed them to all be of the hardback variety with red or brown covers and gold or black lettering on the spines.   I felt as though I had stepped back in time into a library of the early 1960s.   Even the public library in Bulawayo is much more u