There’s no doubt the last two years have been different for students everywhere during the two years of covid-related lockdowns and self-isolation. Last year we focussed on how our students and us as a sixth form adapted to the specific challenges we faced with a full length documentary.
As this year’s graduating cohort joined us just a few months before the world changed, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on their achievements despite the world around them changing constantly and rapidly. A group of NCS students and staff worked with the poet Nick Makoha, sharing stories and experiences of life before and during the pandemic. We then commissioned him to write a new piece of work that reflected what he’d learned.
The poem, “The Light of Beginning,” is presented above, read by those students in a brand new short film. You can also read it below.
The Light of Beginning
A poem by Nick Makoha based on the experience of NCS students
Beginning is not only a kind of action. It is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness.”
— Edward W. Said
For what is unseen and remains out of reach.
How we young men and women from East London
decided that we in all our colour and sizes would
be the hunger found in the seed of success
and the rhythm of hard work. Even when the world
closed down for two years it made no difference.
We turned on the lights in our hearts to guide
the way of our minds. We remembered what
perils our parents struggled through that we might
have the strength to become a pillar holding up
another pillar. Praise to the girl who at home is just
a child but at school became a leader and in so
doing also became the road that leads us to where
you want to go. Praise to the teacher who diluted hours from
their personal life to teach us beyond the spectrum
of the curriculum so that we could become the power
we were waiting for. Praise to the boy who spoke
of the trial of David and Goliath. Prise to the girl
who when she lost her home she built a new one out
of wisdom. Doing her homework on the steps of library
or the back of a bus. Because in the Goliath of all tribulation
this school has become our stone. For that we are grateful.