In Conversation with Mr Wardrop

What has been the highlight of your teaching career at Queen’s? 

That’s a good question, as so much of my job at Queen’s isn’t actually about teaching. In fact, the highlight is probably that I’ve still managed to teach every year group at Queen’s since I joined in 2013 alongside the overall responsibilities that come with the Deputy Head (Academic) and Senior Tutor role.  

I suppose my favourite classes are those that have effortlessly disturbed my composure and challenged my assumptions. I remember I was teaching a particular Year 9 class who were so engaged and interested that it made me see the subject through younger eyes and it reminded me why Chemistry is such a great subject.  

Other highlights include those pupils that you take through GCSE and, while they might not think of themselves as scientists, then chose to do Chemistry A-level, alongside the creative subjects or the humanities. I think that's a really important thing about science and single-sex education: there are no subjects that are off-limits. Those pupils who stick with it for the long haul, even if they’re not paid up scientists but because they enjoy the subject. They are the pupils who really stand out for me. 

What would be your lowlights? 

These last 14 months have obviously been a challenge for everybody. If you go back to January 2020, when we first heard of this thing called ‘Covid’, it was very remote and we didn’t think it was coming our way and then, like a tsunami, it and its consequences just kept on hitting. I want, however, to turn this lowlight into a highlight because I think as a  community Queen’s - alongside the whole education sector - really rose to the challenge and demonstrated what we could do. The resilience and the nimbleness of our teaching staff, parents and pupils, all pulling together, was truly remarkable. 

What elements of Chemistry (if you’ll forgive the pun...) do you think people enjoy the most? 

While we haven't been able to do that much recently for all the obvious reasons, pupils really like the practical element. The real challenge and excitement of chemistry is taking the conceptual and the intangible, then linking these things we cannot see and we can’t even truly understand with fun, exciting, visually arresting things that we actually can observe. 

Without naming names, what makes you remember certain pupils? 

You remember the pupils who I would call the rugged individualists, those that are part of the community but plough their own furrow and do great things as a result. I think it’s so important that there should be space for individuals because I think there is a tendency in society to value the conformists rather than the eccentrics. The fact that Queen’s is a community where not everyone has to conform to the same mould is something we should cherish.  So, pupils who are not conformist either in their subject choices, in their approach to a particular subject, or in the way that they contribute to the community are really valuable; I will always remember them and defend to the hilt that space for individuals to be individuals. 

In your eight years at Queen’s, how do you think the College has changed? 

I know in many ways it’s one of the least important things, but the building has changed enormously. Our brilliant Sixth Form Centre has had a striking impact on the quality of experience for our pupils in the Senior College. Now the Senior College has a superb space which is theirs, and they own it, and everyone else in the College has benefitted from having extra space as a result of this development. 

Queen’s is a school with a very long and distinguished history, but it doesn't wear that history too heavily. We've held on to the best of our traditions, not through some ritualistic adherence but because we like them and because they make Queen’s the community it is. At the same time, we have been unafraid to innovate; for instance, we now offer subjects like Mandarin, Computer Science at GCSE and Psychology. Putting ‘Thrive’ lessons on our curriculum was also a huge step forward; I think this is so important as it’s Queen’s not just ‘talking to talk’ about pastoral care and well-being, but actually ‘walking the walk’. Lots of schools talk about being either an academic school or a pastoral school, but I think speaking in either/or terms is a false dichotomy. Thrive embodies the fact that through being pastorally well supported, academic success is then a consequence. I don’t think this approach is a change in Queen’s but it’s something that we have increasingly put front and centre of what we do.  

Overall, I think Queen’s manages to keep hold of what we hold dear because we value it, rather than because we just have to do it. We do also move with the times (and sometimes, whisper it, ahead of the times). 

We were very impressed with your performance in the Friends video last Christma – what has been your favourite end of term skit?  

The teacher skit thing is really just another great tradition that started over the lockdown. We have done many more of these videos where teachers can really get involved. 

We have always had entertainments at the end of each term, which have been mostly pupil driven, and on occasions, there might be staff contribution or pupils wearing teacher masks and doing dances in the guise of a particular teacher - but actual teachers taking a starring role in anything is a new thing - but long may it continue! All of us frustrated, amateur dramatists finally got our creative outlets. 

Girls currently outnumber boys at A-level Chemistry, but more boys do Chemistry degrees and enter STEM careers. What advice would you give to pupils at Queen’s who are interested in a career in STEM? 

I think you're in one of the best possible situations to pursue STEM careers in the future. By being in this secondary school, in a single-sex environment, you have been brought up academically in a culture where no subjects are off-limit. The climate is certainly a positive one for you. My advice would be to have a questioning approach to everything, where no question is too big or too small - questioning everything is great training for a scientist.  

Asking questions when you don’t understand something is not an admission of weakness. The greatest discoveries have been achieved through not understanding and having the intellectual confidence to ask questions when perhaps the conformists are just assuming that everybody else knows the answer. 

Once you leave this amazingly supportive environment at Queen’s, where you have the space to ask those questions, don’t lose it. Take that forward. Don’t assume that when you're at university, you can sit back and let the other louder voices dominate: keep on asking those questions. 

What will you miss most about Queen’s? 

It's a bit of a cliched answer but I will miss the people. What is a school? A school is a community; made up by the buildings, the history but fundamentally by its people. I won’t forget our staff – whoever forgets a teacher? I will miss that community. The individual pupils that I'm teaching at the moment, the pupils I taught and worked so closely with over the years as well as the supportive parents. I think it's that chance combination of all of those people that make up a community. All schools have their communities but I will really miss this one. 

Why did you join Queen’s? 

I’ve never had a plan, I’ve never written down that I want to be doing ‘this’ by a certain time. When you decide to apply for a job, you look at the role, of course, but it’s the institution that you fall in love with. 

In 2013 I didn't apply for the job at Queen’s because I wanted to leave my previous role. It was the fact that I liked the look of the job. What’s so important when visiting any school for the first time - and particularly so at Queen’s - it’s the moment you cross the threshold from the outside world, and then your expectations are confounded in such a positive way and you just think “this is the place for me.” 

Mr Wardrop then offered us an impromptu tour of the artwork and books in his office  

This picture is of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. I suppose it goes back to the soft spot that I have for individualists; Percy Bysshe Shelley was sent down from Oxford for being an atheist and Mary Shelley was breaking down barriers as a pioneering woman in literature, coming from a proud intellectual family - I have a soft spot for both of them. 

This is Bertrand Russell, someone very much of the establishment, partly I think due to his longevity and the fact that so much of his philosophy embodies those ideas of free thought and a humanistic approach to things, which are close to my heart. I think they’re also quite close to the values that Queen’s has, even if we might not articulate them quite that way - human-centred, freedom to think with no limits and the ability to question. 

Books 

These are either my favourite books or books that I think illustrate some of my interests or aspects of my personality (even if I haven’t read them!) I love the design of the Penguin aesthetic for their early to mid 20th Century books.  

London Map 

I love this map because it embodies the amazing diversity of London, but also displays a unity. It can be a great conversational opening too - in my previous office, if I was having a slightly tricky conversation with a pupil, we could start just by looking at the London map and talking about it, rather than having to start a slightly intense conversation and it takes the heat out of things. 

Queen’s, of course, is nestled between ‘Medical Practitioners’ and ‘Fictitious Detective’. 

The Periodic Table 

This is a limited edition visualisation of the periodic table that I found online. It’s by an emerging artist who found in 2012 and had to collect from her flat in Stepney.