There are two expressions in Japanese that came to mind this week in the Secondary School.
The first is: ‘Nana korobi, ya oki’. This one translates, pretty literally, into ‘Fall down seven times, get up eight’. I wrote last week in The Learning Curve about the need for desirable difficulties when learning. As researchers like Elizabeth and Robert Bjork attest, creating and overcoming challenges is an essential part of producing work of which we are proud.
This has been the case throughout the classrooms, corridors, and activity spaces this week at Mougins. THRIVE taster sessions have begun winding their way through our cultural life. From CEO Kids to Forest Bathing, and from the Extended Project Qualification to mini soccer, the opportunities for our students to extend themselves, develop their resilience, and realise the worth in repeated practice has been felt widely.
We have been busy behind the scenes as teachers, too. A huge focus has gone into ensuring that students are known to us as individuals so that their specific needs can be truly supported. We continue to investigate, adopt and adapt to new structures and routines, and we arrive at the end of the week with a real sense of the school community burgeoning once more. This, I am coming to learn, is ‘very Mougins’. And it is a delight.
Then, at lunchtime today, I saw this new display outside the Millenium Building:

I am yet to find out which class produced it and, indeed, whether it is a Primary or Secondary creation. Indeed, this fact matters less than the message it conveys. Nana korobi, ya oki. There is stronger achievement, togetherness, discipline, and a sense of honest toil when we strive together. That is, I suppose, a slightly longer winded way of highlighting ‘Learning, Community, Respect, and Integrity’: our school values that I have witnessed day in, day out this week.
And so to the final expression: ‘Ichi-go, ichi-e’. In English translation it is something close to the ability to be able to treasure the unrepeatable nature of a moment.
And that, too, for certain, is so Mougins.
by Paul Michael,
Head of Secondary