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Staff Leavers

(brown). It is a particular delight to witness him sustaining these same dapper standards on Classics trips, as he climbs the ash-laden summit of Mount Vesuvius sporting his leather brogues. With heavy heart we wish him farewell after 11 years at MTS. We are the richer for his leadership and his stalwart camaraderie, and his departure will be felt keenly by the SCR and the pupils. We are, however, delighted by his new role as Deputy Head Academic at Chigwell School in Essex: a fresh challenge to which he will bring his broad experience and his humanity. It is with sincere gratitude and affection that we wish Philip, his wife Kate, and their two children, Matthew Bede and Elizabeth Tullia, the very best of fortune and happiness in their new chapter. Ms C. D. Drew Charlotte Drew Lottie Drew joined the School from Beaconsfield High in 2010. She made an impression from the outset, impressing at interview with her commitment to innovation in teaching and interest in coaching techniques. It would be fair to say that she has been part of the culture for change in these areas that has marked the past decade. In a Department noted for its academic clout, Lottie wore her own intellectual talent lightly and established a role as an innovator, particularly in the area of technology. Bringing with her an established understanding of the potential uses of the Virtual Learning Environment, she designed a computer suite for the Classics department and took the lead in the use of technology in the Classics curriculum. There is no doubt that, along with other ambassadors, she paved the way for the placing of technology at the heart of learning in the School today. It is a mark of her dedication that one of her final contributions to Classics has been the creation of a series of screen recordings on Virgil’s Aeneid VI for the Latinists in the Fifth Form to follow linguistic analysis online before the lesson – flipped learning at its best. Her lessons have been notable for their

be overestimated. He has interviewed scholarship candidates over many years and helped to identify their wider skills by extending the challenges to ‘round table’ activities alongside the traditional grilling by heads of department. He has grown his role throughout the years so that he was increasingly involved in final selection, and also took on the challenge of designing the Merchant Taylors’ General paper. Philip has generated a community of Classicists, both within School and beyond. He has fostered strong relationships with prep school Heads and offered solidarity to those outside our community – for example helping to fill a gap by teaching Y8 Latin at St John’s in his final term. He served three years as SCR representative on the governing body, championing the interests of the staff, and shows these same values in his own community, where he currently serves as a Diocesan governor for his children’s local primary school. Indeed, faith has underpinned the values which he has brought to bear in all aspects of his work. Scholar he may be, but he wears his learning lightly, and mucks in with the best of them in his extracurricular supervision of football and the coaching and umpiring of cricket for the U14B team in the summer. Much to the delight of the pupils, he was memorably spotted (and photographed) on the 2014 Hadrian’s Wall Trip participating in the hobby horse Derby race. As a tutor, he has imparted those same qualities of humour and stoicism on generations of Taylors’ boys. Philip is ironic, laconic, razor sharp, sage, and sensitive. He has the enviable gift of capturing the essence of any situation with a pithy headline. When something vexes him, you might hear that faintly Geordie exhalation of breath from the back of his throat, but he is not given to expletive or invective. I hesitate to disappoint him with the cliché ‘sartorial elegance’, but I have not met anyone more deserving of this accolade. On one non-uniform day when someone had the temerity to suggest that he had forgotten a more casual dress code, he bristled and merely pointed downwards to his trousers (corduroy) and his shoes

warmth and Lottie fostered a coterie of academic enthusiasts; uptake from her Fourth Form classes was consistently high. Next year almost thirty boys will be studying Greek in the Divisions and Fifths, and this is in no small part thanks to the way in which she introduced the subject with purpose and warmth, balancing so deftly the serious with the light-hearted. She is able to balance rigour with pace, ensuring the needs of all are addressed in her lessons and discussion was a key part of her approach. Her flexibility has been of great value to the Department and she has been ready to teach anything asked of her, including difficult texts – Euripides, Thucydides, Livy, Sophocles – to some of our most talented Classicists of recent years. A firm believer that learning was enhanced by a breadth of cultural experience, Lottie took the lead in organising trips to Naples and Sicily. Trips to such sites as Pompeii and Herculaneum were in themselves exciting, but for many the trek up to the top of Vesuvius will remain the most vivid – the closest that many have come to Mordor. Lottie ensured that there was a plentiful supply of gelato and pizza to sustain enthusiasm for the archaeological sites. Few who witnessed her recitation “There was a young man of Selinus” in the Greek temple in Sicily will forget the look on the faces of her colleagues. For many boys the Classics trip was their first overseas venture without their family and Lottie’s organisation ensured they were able to survive and even wash occasionally. This attention to individual care, combined with her interest in coaching, meant that Lottie has been an outstanding tutor. No one could dispute that she has gone the extra mile in supporting boys in her tutor group and their parents. Her thoughtful approach to support meant that reports were written with the utmost care and identified as best practice. Lottie took time to find out about each boy in her care and his background, so that all communication felt personal and honest. Support was freely given and never more appreciated than in lockdown, when Lottie ensured that all her tutees were mentored. Those in her tutor group would count themselves

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