Kate Newsholme by Anthony Lyons
K
ate Newsholme (neé Findon) joined King’s in September Kate truly loved being in the English 2012. Looking back now, she claims that her interview Department, under three different success in October 2011, exactly one week after giving birth leaders, and enjoyed the company of to Megan (Libby arrived in 2015), is still her greatest achievement. On great colleagues who were, she recalls, the day, she wobbled over to the school from the Cathedral Precincts, so supportive of one another. She where she lived with her extraordinary husband, David, now Director loved being a boarding house tutor of Music at the Cathedral. Then she somehow taught two full lessons and getting to know pupils outside the and survived three interviews but couldn’t take the regulation tour classroom because, perhaps as the for applicants because she couldn’t walk that far. daughter of a muchAs a result, she says, she never really worked out beloved clergyman, ‘Her own passion and where some departments were. But naturally she she has always commitment when got the job. believed pastoral teaching surely came care in education must come first. She loved the Kate will be celebrated most, of course, for her humour and energy of teenagers, and her own from her conviction genius in the classroom, but we mustn’t forget passion and commitment when teaching surely that English Literature she was also a superb tutor in Jervis for her entire came from her conviction that English Literature is the greatest subject time at King’s and loved every minute of it, just is the greatest subject in the world. as the girls loved her. She was also a pioneering in the world.’ Head of Shell and then an efficient and creative Colleagues from the boarding house, the English Deputy Head of English from September 2016 to August 2019. She Department and the Common Room are unanimous that Kate followed that faultless administrative performance with a pastoral was uniquely impressive. Their praise would fill many pages, but role as Head of Teacher Development from September 2019 to essentially they wish to celebrate her fierce intelligence, acute August 2021, although for much of that time the school was teaching literary sensibility, unpretentiousness, pragmatism, efficiency, online during the pandemic and Kate was unable to carry out many refreshing honesty, impossible-to-emulate work ethic and, above all, of her progressive plans for the care of colleagues. In her spare her friendship. time she ran Shakespeare Corner during King’s Week for two years, the Remove event Speeches in the Chapter House for five, and the Although no ceiling in education, glass or otherwise, could ever annual Creative Writing journal Poetry and Prose for eight. restrict Kate, she has inevitably now returned to academia, and has just finished her first year of an Open University PhD on silence in Kate’s own memories of her busy life at King’s include both ups and Shakespeare, which involves reading the complete works from end downs but, as anyone who had the privilege of working with such to end. She is therefore, right now, in Heaven. I met her for coffee a complete professional will know, she met triumph and disaster recently and was thrilled to hear about her thesis, which is truly just the same. For example, she once agreed to oversee the rock original, but also delighted that she has not changed one bit. We concert after Sophia Gripari and Scarlet Pughe had begged her to do discussed some of her experiences as a student once again – critical so, and anyone can guess the sang froid required from the overseer reading, footnotes and bibliographies and the like. ‘Academics,’ she of that particular weekend event. And on two consecutive Fridays said, ‘don’t half talk a load of…’ Kate took one half of a whole 5th Form to the Globe Theatre in London to see The Merchant of Venice. Anyone who has taken a theatre trip, anywhere with anyone, knows that even once with a dozen pupils is a bit of a challenge. And in 2016, when she had just returned from maternity leave, she took over a fifth-form set that needed to produce five pieces of coursework, study three exam texts and learn the skills for a Language paper in just one and a half terms. Such was her scrupulous attention to detail and warm encouragement of the pupils that they all did well.
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CANTUARIAN | 2021