With the sun beaming through the large windows and radiating warmth onto our laps, we sat across from Mr Howarth in his office, shuffling our papers and sipping at tea. We were ready to gain a deeper insight into the mind of our principal.
What is your favourite event as a College?
Mr Howarth leaned back in his chair, contemplating before coming to the conclusion he loved seeing the awe and expressions of Years 7s at Top of The Pops. In an age before covid, with the buzz of Christmas just round the corner, year 7s experience for the first time, the energy and excitement that explodes at house events. The deafening house chants and rhythmic stamping of the feet that embodies the spirit of JCG is a miraculous thing to experience for the first time, and it is no surprise Mr Howarth gets great joy out of this too.
What would be your dream dinner party guest list?
After a moment of thought Mr Howarth revealed that his first guest would be the poet William Blake. Widely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now seen as a visionary of the Romantic Age. Mr Howarth stated he wished to understand what his sense of the world today would be and listen to Blake's opinions on the social and environmental circumstances of the 21st Century.
Smiling sweetly when mentioning his next guest, Mr Howarth said it was to be Jane Austen, seemingly lit up at her mention, which is no surprise given that Mr Howarth’s University degree and one of his major passions is English Literature.
Rather contrastingly, Mr Howarth then expressed his wishes for Trotsky to attend. Shaping communist Russia, Trotsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary born in 1879 alongside the fascinating mind of Lenin. He said he would want to understand Trotsky’s views on the world and what it has become since his lifetime.
What would you be doing if you weren’t where you are today?
Mr Howarth revealed that as a child he was inspired by James Herriot, a British veterinary surgeon and novelist, but he personally never felt the urge to follow a scientific pathway.
He recalled instead his experiences of helping at adventure camps for people with severe disabilities, looking back fondly at the inspiring people who he had helped teach to raft and abseil, and who in turn taught him to never let society put boundaries on what you can do and are capable of.
He continued on to explain how his father had been blind since birth and although an astounding man capable of much, society limited him in what they believed he could do.
These experiences, he believes, lead him to want to provide opportunities for young people and transform lives. Inspired by some of his teachers, he felt moved to follow in their path and become a teacher himself.
He jokingly acknowledged that he hates being told what to do, and although it was daunting, he found his calling by becoming headteacher at the ripe age of 36, learning and growing as a person ever since.
Returning directly to the question we posed, he said he had a secret passion for architecture- never missing an episode of Grand Designs, and he is fascinated by how the space that surrounds us inspires and impacts us so greatly.
Now, for your desert island discs?
Proposing an eclectic mix full of Jazz, Mr Howarth stated this was the music he could listen to continually if stuck on a desert island:
-Ella Fitzgerald
-Tears for Fears (album The Seeds of Love) a tribute to his first concert
-Mozart: The Magic Flute
-Eva Cassidy
Additionally Mr Howarth said if he were to bring something to read it would be Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, which have been high on his ‘to-read’ list for some time, that follow the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. As you can imagine, this was a welcomed response to Tamsin and I, both being History students fascinated by medieval minds.
If you were to visit any period in history where would you go?
After pondering for a moment, Mr Howarth settled on exploring the transformative and spangled age of the 1960s. He reasoned that it was a decade of unleashing and embracing new ideas and concepts, a transformative era of the Beatles but most crucially of hope and creativity.
What's the top thing on your bucket list?
He answered promptly ‘To visit India’. As part of his MA at Leeds, Mr Howarth studied post colonial fiction, exploring the world through Indian novels.
He said he wished to immerse himself in a culture that is so starkly but beautifully different to ours, alongside his brother.
How do you remember everyone’s name?
We wished to gain insight into Mr Howarth’s marvellous talent of learning everyone’s names and how he manages it.
He answered that to him, it is a necessity, because to belong is to be known. Mr Howarth teaches year 7 classes every new school year to learn about each of us as his students individually and makes sure to always say hello to everyone around school to keep up the habit. He reinforced that it is important not to be remote from each other, which is something I found rather inspiring.
Who could you not live without in the College?
Mr Howarth stated Jo and Miroslaw, the school caretakers, were the two people inside the College he couldn’t live without. Both ‘incredible people’ who make the school run smoothly he said, they are the unsung heroes of JCG.
To conclude, some inspiring words of advice
In the words of Samuel Beckett, a Nobel prize winning novelist and playwright; ‘No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’
He earnestly expressed that whilst we can’t reach perfection, we must only try to do good and make others' lives better.
Interview conducted by College Cloud Team (Tamsin, Kayleigh and Imi)
Written and edited by Imi Dobber Year 12
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