Chris Moyse doing the opening speech at TLT’s 5th event. 

He starts with a book shelf….

He recommends the bottom left, a book about the All Blacks. My previous Head of Sixth did a series of assemblies based on this and they were great – “Nobody looks after All Blacks because we look after ourselves, and others”. This led to my tutor group having our own haka. 

Chris asks, are you going to “leave the shirt in a better place”? What’s going to be your legacy?

He moves on to pull quotes from the other books. What’s your mission? What will be your epitaph? What’s your one sentence? What’s the worst thing someone could say about you as a person whilst retaining an element of truth? How will you put a dent in the universe?

Then…who do you want to emulate? Chris gives us some of his background and talks about how some of his idols pushed him to being a better person. He talks about a famous pole vaulter who broke the world record 35 times – going up in tiny increments every time (I missed the name, doh). Think about what tiny thing you can do to kick on a bit next thing – what will be your plus one after today? When you apply your learning, then it becomes CPD. The challenge is always to improve, even when you’re the best. Excellence comes through practice. Force yourself out of autopilot and make your practice more purposeful. Have a goal (not goals) and focus relentlessly on that goal. Get some feedback early on and go beyond the familiar. 

Also though – embrace failure. Sometimes you’re going to plateau. Being good is enough. Be happy with ugly but effective teaching. Focus on the things that are easy to do, but easy not to do. 

Chris finishes with an All Blacks phrase: if you’re not growing anywhere, you’re not going anywhere.