Menu
Bright Sparks & Early Years
0-4 Years
St. Mary’s Prep
4-11 Years
St. Mary’s College
11-18 Years
Friends of
St. Mary’s
Welcome to our first-ever school blog!
6 Oct 2022
Hello, everyone!
Welcome to our new blog which will celebrate life at St. Mary’s Prep and enable members of our community to shine a spotlight on the things that they are passionate about.
To kick off this exciting new project, we’ve caught up with Mr Jonathan Webster, our Headmaster, for an exclusive Q&A.
Read on to learn more…
01. What do you believe makes St. Mary’s Prep so special?
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes the Prep so special but it is certainly rooted in the community feel that we have. We are always striving to have a school family in which we can achieve and fail together and learn through that process.
I am also tremendously fortunate to work with a team who have an ethos very similar to my own when working with young people. We believe, even on the tough days, that we have the best job in the world.
You can be having a day during which everything seems to be going wrong and then a child will do something to make you laugh uncontrollably and the other stuff does not seem so important.
02. Your favourite inspirational quote?
I have two…
03. What is something people would be surprised to find out about you?
En route to becoming a teacher, I managed to…
Serve pizza to David Beckham
Drive a forklift truck
Tarmac roads
Tell stories using puppets to children who had eaten far too many sweets at a play centre!
05. And finally, what was your favourite book when you were younger and why?
Boy by Roald Dahl
Ironically, given that reading is the core part of our whole school curriculum, I did not enjoy reading up until the age of 10. I did not see ‘the point’ and much preferred running around outside with a rugby ball.
My Year 6 teacher, Mrs Charnock (equally the scariest and most wonderful teacher EVER!) made me a bet. She said that if I read one book of her choosing and did not like it, I did not have to read again. I had to answer 5 questions when I had completed the book, which was Boy by Roald Dahl.
Well… that was the first time I had ever been told off at bedtime because I kept turning my lamp back on to read some more and when it came to answering the questions, I could not hide my animation and enjoyment even though I did try to as I wanted to win the bet!
That book taught me that authors could paint pictures in your mind and could transport you to other places and times. I recall, many years later, reading The Book Thief and one of the characters asks for a description of the weather and says, “If your eyes could speak, what would they say?” That line really hit home for me as I believe this is how amazing authors can create images for children and adults that last a lifetime.