In a special Whole School assembly, our guest speaker was James Shone, from the charity I Can and I Am, which seeks to inspire confidence in every individual. James spoke first about how he was riding the crest of a wave in 2012; at the age of 41 he was married with four children, had attained his first school headship and was about to go on a big family holiday to Greece, when a medical examination revealed that he had a brain tumour. After 27 hours of surgery, 80 days in hospital and the loss of the majority of his sight, things seemed bleak, but James got through it by focusing on three things: Looking up (having a sense of faith), looking forward (learning from the past and using it to our advantage in the future) and looking out (doing something positive for someone else). “What we don’t want to do is to look down, back or in”, James said. “Don’t be a DBI – a dangerously bleak individual.”

James then went on to speak to our Year 7-9 pupils about I Can and I Am and how to inflate our “golden balloon of self belief.” He talked about looking for your own type of intelligence, having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset, looking for our purpose and our element (“a meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion”), making the right choices, how setbacks can be spring boards, developing resilience (“remember that failure is an event, not a person”) and having a sense of community. “Have an attitude of gratitude”, James said. “Focus on what you can do and not on what you can’t”.

http://www.icanandiam.com/