‘The End Is Where We Start From’
A new school year
by Brian Radcliffe
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To explore our understanding of ways to approach the new school year.
Preparation and materials
- None required.
Assembly
- I love a good novel. I’ve read a few of them over the summer holidays. (You may wish to mention some titles.) But I have a confession to make: sometimes, I take a peep at the last page before I’ve started reading from the beginning. I’m not sure why I do it. Maybe I want to reassure myself that it’s a story that resolves itself properly, that I’m not going to get frustrated. I want a good ending!
- September can be rather like that too. I want it to have a good ending. An ending that’s appropriate to a spring and summer full of memories. September is the time to look back, but not with regret or even anger. September is a time to look back at everything that was good: a good ending. In fact, September rhymes very nicely with ‘remember’!
- Ask the students the following questions.
- What do you remember most about the past few months?
- What have been the highlights?
If appropriate, allow discussion with a partner or in small groups.
Encourage the students to think about holidays, achievements, successes, encounters, new understanding and so on. You may wish to initiate this discussion with some of your own memories. - It appears that many of us have enjoyed an exciting, enjoyable and fulfilling time. September marks the end of this phase of the year. Nights are drawing in. Temperatures are beginning to drop. But with these memories to look back on, September provides a good ending to this phase of the year.
- T. S. Eliot was a twentieth-century Anglo-American poet. In his poem Little Gidding, he makes a surprising statement: ‘the end is where we start from’.
Pause to allow time for thought, before repeating the phrase.
Ask the following questions.
- What could T. S. Eliot mean by this?
- How can that contradiction apply to us? - Point out that the statement is particularly relevant at this time of year. September marks the end of the time of year most of us have looked forward to eagerly, especially the weeks of the summer holidays. We’ve been able to relax, enjoy the sun and do what we want.
Now we’ve reached the moment that some of us love and some of us dread: the start of a new school year. The end of one phase is the starting point for the next, just like Eliot wrote. We stand on the start line.
Time for reflection
An athlete in the starting blocks, a racing driver on the starting grid, a footballer ready for kick-off: all of these people have reached their place on the start line because of who they are and what they have achieved. It’s the same for us. Now is the time to concentrate on how we’ve grown, what we’ve achieved so far, what we’ve learned and the obstacles that we’ve overcome. We are not the same person we were when we last stood here early in September 2022. We are more than we were.
So, let’s consider some questions.
- Where do we want to get to? Some people would advise us to set targets or ambitions.
- How do we want to grow?
- What do we want to achieve before this time next year?
- What do we want to learn?
- What obstacles can we see in front of us and how might we overcome them?
We shouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves. We might achieve some ambitions, but not all of them. That doesn’t matter, as long as we move forwards towards them.
Many ideas will have passed through our minds during the last five minutes. Some will be about school, but there are many other areas of life for which today can be a starting point. There are new relationships to be made, sporting achievements to aim for, rehearsals to attend, physical fitness to achieve and a whole range of explorations in life as we move forwards to become adults.
Let’s take a look back, but then be ready to move forward!
Here’s a song about big ambitions.
Song/music
‘I want it all’ from the film High School Musical, available at: https://youtu.be/8uWtOPmpsW0 (4.40 minutes long)
‘I want it all’ by Queen, available at: https://youtu.be/hFDcoX7s6rE (4.12 minutes long)
