A year can feel like a long time in education. It’s hard to comprehend the sheer relief, and exhaustion, we all felt at Heritage International School this time last year, as we danced the hora in the May sunshine.
We were just grateful we had made it to the end of an extraordinary academic year marked by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Thankfully, Moldova hadn’t also been invaded as part of the “USSR nostalgia reunion invite” being brutally delivered on our neighbours.
Nonetheless, I have never been more frightened as I have been this academic year of what was being asked of me as a school leader and what my school community could potentially be facing. An ugly brutal war continues across our border and missiles cross over.
“We were just grateful we had made it to the end of an extraordinary academic year.”
The winter meant Russian gas was switched off, energy outages, rising prices and high costs. There were paid protestors in Chisinau each weekend aiming to destabilise the government, and the fear of war coming to Moldova with a Russian army sitting in the conflict enclave of Transnistria since 1992.
So this summer, with its sports days, musical performances, graduation days and international days, gave me the chance to breathe more easily and also to reflect – something vital for school leaders. I don’t remember this unit on my NPQH.
One of the main priorities this time last year was the absolute need for the schools to focus on “making moments” against the backdrop of a decade that had given young people an unending stream of potential apocalyptic threats.
The pandemic, war, energy crisis, cost of living, AI takeover, reversals on human rights and equalities and climate catastrophe have been a lot to process, to say the least.
“The students shouted back that they didn’t want to be the future as things stand.”
I heard a commentator recently tell a story where he was speaking to university students and concluded on what he thought was a hopeful, much used cliché, that “they were the future”.
He said they shouted back that they didn’t want to be the future as things stand. Anyone working with children and young people could be forgiven for empathising with them. I think my own experience of education, young people and this hopelessness inspired my recent International School Magazine article calling for educators to offer something other than the “dystopian future” it is easy to forecast. Heritage even made the front cover again.
The lodestar for my operational and strategic leadership has always been about hope for the future, certainty and belief in the transformative power of education. This is exactly what we focused on and why the academic year was our most successful one to date in our short six year history.
“No one asks me anymore why I am in Moldova or even where it is anymore.”
Nothing in this life is set in stone and as we see hubristic fallout of once “mighty titans” in the US, UK and even to the east of Moldova, young people are seeing, many times over, the emperors have no clothes and very much have feet of clay.
The hope for Moldova is very much that the leadership of the country can shake off the demons of its past and instead align with Europe. That way, it will ensure the pathway for its future is not as a piece of a long forgotten empire, but as a modern, democratic and prosperous state in Europe.
And although the war on Ukraine still continues after 16 months, the complexity of it has changed. When a rogue mercenary army can march nearly on Moscow in a day, many in this part of the world know that victory and peace for Eastern Europe is not too long away now. Momentum and being on the right side of history helps banish a lot of fears in this corner of Europe.
No one asks me anymore why I am in Moldova or even where it is anymore. I am so proud of Heritage, the teams I am in, the school communities I serve, Moldova and its people. Great things come from small nations and they should never be underestimated. Ask the Irish or Singaporeans.