A teacher's eye view

We asked staff for any news they would like to share on the website this month, and science teacher John Montgomery responded with several short stories which we felt gave a great impression of some of the things happening this month at Woodstock. We hope you enjoy these quirky items.

High Doon - tennis shoot-out

Led by Vancouver veteran Raman McArthur and team captain, Benjamin Basnet (pictured) the Woodstock tennis team took on the might of Doon School on Saturday 24th February. We looked better, and wielded more branded goods, but the Doon guys, with their coach an Indian top 100 seed, scored more points. The tea was good and the atmosphere gentlemanly. At the end Mr. McArthur put on a fine display himself, giving that coach good cause to remove at least half of his track suit.

Woodstock students check out the power supply in Mussoorie

Hooking up 12V power packs and putting 2A through a light bulb is not experiential enough for our students when it comes to appreciating the might of the invisible power lighting our lives on the hill station. Realising that our 12v at the little plug-in terminals was 220V at the wall, 440V in the orange box outside the classroom, 11,000V coming into the school and 33,000V coming in to the city, nothing would do but pay a visit. Equipped with clipboards in order to feel like engineers, and armed with 20 questions with which to torture our host, engineer Govind Singh, students descended on the sub station behind the stationery shop. Huge wires and dozens of porcelain insulators met our gaze. There were seven lines coming off the main 'feed' (engineering parlance), one for ITM, four for the city and two for Woodstock. Back at the Pradeep's sweet shop we discussed this seemingly disproportionate amount of energy directed to our school, two sevenths at a guess. "You guys pay your bill," the shopkeeper intervened, "so you get more attention." Shocking.

Cold classrooms improve teaching

At about 7 deg celsius, the brain seems to work better. The pleasure function switches off and all interest in living diminishes, until study seems the only hope of surviving. Sung Ho, pictured here basking in the icy glow of room 24, recently obtained 99% in his Math test, a 25% improvement on warm atmosphere testing. That last percent may be obtained if we introduce a snow machine in the room and an arctic gale simulation.

New Math book proves a big hit

David Raynor's Oxford Press masterpiece of a Math text book for IGCSE Math has finally found its way to the desks of our number-hungry grade 9 boffins. At $55 a spine, there were doubts about necessary ROI, but within minutes of cracking them open, students were launched on a mystery tour of shape, space, number and algebra to delight and confound. Hannah Lewis, a normally sceptical learner, defied the critics by spontaneously writing on her latest test script "I love the new Math book". The class collectively wrote an acknowledgement note to the author via the publisher.

Winter sports

The recent snows brought out the Olympian in the Woodstocker, with quickly acquired skills in snowballing, foot skiing, and ice skating on display. Jigme Sherpa spent a few hours in the workshop making his own sled for the luge, pictured here on a test run with Ashwin Chacko providing extra thrust.