School portraits / A Lower Sixth autumn, September to the Christmas lip-sync
A Sixth-Former Directs Year 7’s Christmas Lip-Sync. Ours Did Too.
At Cheadle Hulme, Lower Sixth mentors help the new Year 7s through their first term. So I set one up at home, between our sixth-former and our Year 7, in time for Christmas.
At Cheadle Hulme School, sixth-formers mentor the new Year 7s, a small group each, once a week in afternoon form time. One Lower Sixth mentor wrote about it on the school blog in January 2025, and two lines stopped me. The first was that “we helped the mentees with a Christmas Lip-Sync competition by directing and editing their performances.” The second was that it had made her appreciate “how much we in Sixth Form have grown since Year 7!”
I have a sixth-former. I have a Year 7. I had, I thought, an idea.
Our eldest is in the Lower Sixth and communicates mostly through notes on the fridge. Our youngest, Rufus, started Year 7 in September and has since lost his tie four times. The CHS mentor described being someone the younger ones can talk to who isn’t a teacher or an adult. I explained this to the eldest at tea and told him he was now Rufus’s peer mentor: weekly, Thursdays, front room. He asked what was in it for him. I said a break from the pressure of A levels, which is roughly what the blog promises. He asked for £10. We settled on £5 and the new Wi-Fi password.
For three weeks they discussed nothing I could hear through the door. Then, in the first week of December, Rufus announced there would be a Christmas lip-sync in the front room on Boxing Day, and that his mentor was directing and editing. I had not suggested this. I had suggested times tables.
The production took over the house. The eldest marked the stage on the carpet in masking tape. There were three costume changes and a long row about whether a Santa hat is a costume or a prop. Rufus was given the big entrance, from behind the sofa, and came in early, confidently, twice. Grandma was told she could watch but not film. I was asked to keep the dog out of shot, then the cat, and then, after a take I thought had gone quite well, myself.
CHS, I notice, also sends a team of Year 12 Peer Mentors to accompany candidates throughout its entrance exam day, so a child applying for Year 7 is looked after by a sixth-former before they have even got in. Ours was looked after by his on Boxing Day, in a final cut that ran four minutes ten and was, I have to admit, very good.
The eldest has grown a great deal since Year 7, mostly into an editor. I am in the credits. Catering.
Sources
- My Role as a Peer Mentor — a Lower Sixth pupil (Waconian)
- Senior School Assessment FAQs
- A Culture of Kindness
Notes from the School Gates is a light-hearted column: home scenes and family characters are invented; schools and public facts are real. About the column