From the Middle School and High School Principal

 On Rhythms for the Year and my First Semester as Principal

The strangest thing about my first year in Singapore working at the United World College was that my body had this odd tense feeling as we hit November and December.  It was like there was a tension in the air, which I couldn't resolve.  It took me a while to work out what it was.  I was waiting for Winter, and Singapore being just 1 degree north of the equator meant my body was just waiting in vain.  

"But there are seasons, they are just very subtle" people would tell me, and still I waited.  It was not until my second year that my body attuned to the drier hotter spells, and then the wonderful downpours of rain to the sound and lights of a thunder storm that came in the months of September and October.  At last I began to relax as my body picked up the rhythm of the year.

Frazer's Golden Bough was one of the most influential books of the late Victorian Period and typical of the relentless curiosity and cataloguing of that period.  In it, Sir James George Frazer seeks to unite virtually every mid winter and harvest ritual into the same genealogy - from the mistletoe, to holly, to the Christmas trees, corn-dolls, Sumerian rituals, ancient Rome, human sacrifice to the Christian story of Jesus's death and ascent to Heaven- they all have the same ideas and rhythms behind them.

As winter approaches and life begins to go into hibernation around us, we seek images of death and rebirth; we particularly focus on berries and colours like Holly and Mistletoe that remain aloft and away from the dead earth, until flourishing back to life in Spring.  We associate these both with fertility and images of death and rebirth - hence kissing under the mistletoe, or bringing evergreen trees into our houses - or indeed some unfortunate human sacrifices at this time of year in early Europe.  Around the world in every culture there are versions of these rhythms, designed to mark the wind down to winter, and the hope of fertility and joy in the new year through rebirth.  

Each place, each community has its own rituals to mark this human need for rhythm and cycles for the year.  At ISA we end the semester with a flurry of activity and our final assembly this week.  The days are drawing in, and we yearn for the holidays to come and release us into snug darkness, and fairy lights as a sign of the hope and joy we anticipate in the new year.  For me as principal in my first year, the rhythm is particularly striking and strongly felt, as I return to schools after two years at LEGO.  I wish you joy at the break, to rest in the hyggelig darkness and hope that the lights, holly and mistletoe all remind you of the great things to come in 2024.