Free Rangers: Forest Farm Senior School

In the Christmas holidays, I read The Dead Men Stood Together, Chris Priestley's retelling of the classical Coleridge poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  For a conventional review see The Book Trust , but my blog piece is one of the Christmas Reading Challenge activities where we were asked to redesign the book cover in a way that showed our engagement with the themes in the book. At first, I wasn't sure what to draw, as the story is oddly paced and the events are confusing. The imagery is rich and I was overwhelmed with options! However, when I looked back I could identify the moment when the story changed drastically.  This key event was when the character's uncle shot the albatross in the eye. "Everything my uncle did seemed to have some effect."  After the death of the albatross, the boat becomes stuck fast in the ice before the sun comes out and saves them. However, the sun is too intense and the sailors become easily tired and grumpy. After this, more st...

Epic sci-fi film by Christopher Nolan where theoretical astrophysics plays a starring role. One of the reasons that the film Interstellar is so compelling is because of its scientific accuracy.  Its complex plot explores wormholes and supermassive black holes and the idea of time dilation due to gravity.  Although time travel as portrayed in the film is not yet a reality, Nolan certainly carries us away with the idea of its theoretical possibility. The story is set in the not-too-distant future of our planet. The state of the environment is so devastating that everything on earth is dying and soon there will be nothing left. The presentation of the scorched earth and famine conditions are a clear warning about the climate change crisis we face today and the state of the farmland in the film is scarily close to the stories on our news feeds.  The main character is Cooper, who used to be a NASA pilot, before abandoning his stellar dreams to focus on farming enough food t...

Emory Andrew Tate is an internet personality and former professional kickboxer. Following his kickboxing career, Tate began offering paid self-improvement courses and memberships through his website and later rose to fame as an online influencer. He was recently arrested following an investigation into human trafficking and rape accusations and as of the writing of this article is currently in detention with his brother and business partner Tristan. In this blog post, I am not going to cover my opinions on Tate, nor am I going to go through his extensive list of controversies, but I am interested in why the methods he uses to garner attention and support are so effective, and will try to explain why these methods work. Confidence Confidence is key. Tate’s ‘Top G’ persona of being powerful and intelligent is rooted in the fact that he strides everywhere he goes, talks with purpose and never shows vulnerability. When he talks, he never stutters and he has a stoic demeanour that leads peo...

The Senior School is using the New Year to launch a new blog! Watch this space (sporadically!) for interesting writing about things that matter to our young people.