Aims to nurture gentle confidence
A sit down with Auckland Park Preparatory School's new headmistress sets the tone for a whole new way of teaching.
Nurturing gentle yet confident young people who will go out into society with strong conviction in themselves is what Auckland Park Preparatory School’s new headmistress is all about.
Now six months into her role, the paper met with Chantel Jarvis at the Auckland Park-based school on what was its 101st birthday, to sit down with this leader who has a strong focus on innovation and inquiry-based learning.
A mother of two young girls herself, Jarvis, has been in education for the past 20 years. Sometime after getting her qualifications from Stellenbosch University, she, at 29 years old, became deputy head at an England-based school where she gained a lot of experience. By the time she was 33 years old, she became the acting head of the same school. Even though she would later apply and get the position of head of the school, she moved back to South Africa after it was clear to her that she wanted to raise her girls around a bigger support system.
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“Once we were back in SA, I quickly realised being a stay-at-home, though many do adore it, was not for me, and I decided I need to get back into some sort of job,” she explained. She some time teaching Grade 5 boys of St. Peter’s Schools and then moved to St. Mary’s for a post where she oversaw the school’s preschool. It was during this time that her love for inquiry-based learning and innovation began, “I realised that you cannot just be stuck in structures, and my love for teaching children differently, began.”
In the very same year, she was approached by St Stithians College for a deputy head post, to which she obliged, and in 2015 she began work at the college until she finally made her way to Auckland Park Prep. “I just fell in love with this school, and I decided I needed the next challenge in my life, and it was not until I came here that I found I needed this challenge and that God had actually opened up another pathway to opportunity for me.”
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In her time in education, she has found that children teach her every day, and as she sees it, it is not so much about what knowledge teachers can impart but rather what children shape in their knowledge, as they want to know more about how they relate to this world and about wider topics. “We have to appeal to children’s interests so that we can shape the concepts and skills we want to teach. Within the prep school, she plans to help raise girls to be part of an ever-changing world, making sure they send girls out into the world who are gently confident and sure of who they are, “There is a beauty in having our girls in firm belief of exactly who they are,” she said.
A walk around the school with Jarvis proved just how important it is for someone in her position to engage in a powerful yet tender way with learners. Her walk through the school was met with a flurry greeted with excitement and longing to be engaged with. Through this, one can surmise that gone are the days’ when heads of schools were just people who sat tucked away behind their desks waiting to scold should you enter.
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