Hampton@Home: May 1, 2020

Welcome to the third edition of H@H. I hope that you and your loved ones are keeping well and staying safe.

Hamptonians have completed another successful week of guided home learning and I have been delighted to hear from my colleagues that our boys’ high standards are being upheld at summer term e-Hampton. As always, they are rising to the challenge and showing characteristic enthusiasm, commitment and good humour in engaging with MS Teams sessions and tasks set by their teachers on Firefly.

Grateful thanks are also due to Hampton parents for the practical support and encouragement you are offering your sons in helping them embrace the School routine associated with their new ‘normal’. Speaking from personal experience since the government required us to close the School site, there is a great deal to juggle in resolving the competing requirements of different family/household members. I should imagine that sharing workspaces, digital equipment and internet bandwidth with your children is requiring logistical and diplomatic skills of the highest order! I also wonder whether seeing your sons interact with their teachers has given you fresh insight into the range of professional skills involved in helping them to learn? I am certainly hoping that renewed national and global respect for those in the teaching profession will be one of the silver linings of the Covid-19 cloud.

This week’s e-newsletter reminds us of the many admirable personal qualities of Hamptonians, including those shown via the ingenious charity fundraising initiatives many boys and their families have been devising during the ‘lockdown’ period. We also celebrate this year’s Young Enterprise team on their success in the online YE area final and the imagination and literary élan of our budding authors in the 2020 Creative Writing Challenge. I also found it heart-warming and inspiring to hear two of our rugby-playing alumni, Louis Lynagh and Gwilym Bradley speak about their first steps in the professional game and reminisce about their time in Hampton black and yellow. I’m glad that they both referred to School Captain James Thompson’s last-gasp, match-winning try against Dulwich College – I recall that it took every ounce of Headmasterly restraint that I could muster not to jump over the barrier and join in the on-field celebrations myself! I am sure that you will, like me, find these and the other H@H stories entertaining, informative and uplifting.

As an historian, I am especially looking forward to our Hampton School Remembers week, which commences on Monday ahead of the upcoming 75^th anniversary of VE Day. Among the online events that we are running, we shall be learning more about our School’s remarkable history during World War Two. We will also be able to read about the poignant, fascinating stories that you have kindly been sending in about the roles your own family members played during the Second World War. My parents and I have really enjoyed, via FaceTime, contributing some memories of the wartime experiences of my own grandfathers, Arthur Knibbs and John Robbins. The latter was a Spurs supporter, which just goes to show that nobody’s perfect!

I hope you enjoy a restful weekend.

With kind regards and best wishes