You can see from our fortnightly newsletters that there is enough happening in the Junior school for us to fill these pages every week. The girls and their teachers are fully occupied, and they have their hands full with academics, music and sport – for starters, last Tuesday and Wednesday, our Senior Primary choir and orchestra participated in two evenings of remarkable performance and magical collaboration at our annual Singing Sistas event held in The Edge.

Different schools featured each night, but both programmes culminated in combined choir performances conducted by St Mary’s own Mr Potgieter and Mrs Mehlomakhulu that lifted the roof of our magnificent theatre. What the choirs achieved together, and with limited rehearsal time, is a tribute not only to our talented and committed conductors, but also to the audience, whose spontaneous reprisal of the Chorus medley (Yawa lembewu - And the seed fell on the earth and Hayo mathatha - If God is with us, there are no problems), demonstrated the power of music to create instant communities.

https://bit.ly/SingingSistasEncore

This week marked the beginning of our school-wide celebration of books and reading with the Grade 7s hosting their storytelling evening at Little Saints and in the Grade 0 classrooms. A favourite event with the younger children, storytelling evening is cherished by the girls not only for its theatrical attractions, but also for its relaxed dress code and simple menu: pyjamas and hot chocolate. It heralds a series of other, related events, including parent and peer reading mornings, Hooked on Books, Wanda the Musical, and our book character parades. While we’re on the subject, please remember to contribute to our collection of gently worn books to be donated to other school libraries.

On Tuesday, with very little fanfare and minimal fuss, a small St Mary’s delegation went on an outing to one of our feeder nursery schools: me, our head of marketing, Kathy Mittendorf, our head of public relations, Leigh-Anne Verster, and three of our girls from the Senior Primary: Shilo Alberts, Imaan Kana (Grade 4) and Ella Sproule (Grade 5). We were invited by Bluebird Pre-Primary to give a short presentation on our school to interested parents; the three girls who joined us on the morning – at very short notice! – were asked to speak about their experience of moving from Bluebird to Grade 0 at St Mary’s, and they did an admirable job, fielding questions on difficult topics like the advantages of monastic education, what chapel attendance means to them, and the fine balancing act of learning to win and lose graciously. Our audience was small, but intent, and I was pleased with the confidence and responsiveness of our girls.

More than that, and something that probably goes unmentioned too often, I was gratified by the girls’ willingness to speak about their school and their obvious excitement at being asked to represent us (the attractions of missing a few lessons and spending time off the school property notwithstanding). It’s worth noting that this desire to speak about their school and explain it to interested outsiders is something we see not only in our team of marketing girls in Grade 7 and the Senior School, but among our girls in general. I often catch snippets of the girls’ conversation as they take prospective parents on planned tours of the Junior School, or when they find themselves guiding a lost parent from one venue to another on our campus. The girls express themselves naturally and with deep conviction, which shouldn’t surprise us. They are telling a good story.

SARAH WARNER
JUNIOR SCHOOL HEADMISTRESS