Dr Braybrook celebrates 20 years at Concord in 2022 so we caught up with him for his memories of College... and we were in for a treat! If you were in Dr Braybrook's classes read on as you may find your name mentioned in these lovely collection of stories. Join us too in congratulating him on his 20th anniversary!

Q) Where did you go to university and what were you like as a student?

I was very lucky in securing a place to study Chemistry at Balliol College in Oxford. I got the offer based on my performance in an optional- and very difficult- entrance exam and an interview. The deal in those days was that if you passed the exam, you received the minimum permittable conditional offer which was two E grades at A Level.

What was I like as a student? It is summed up by the fact that I tried my hardest to achieve the two E grades and nearly got them. In retrospect, universities should never give such a low offer to an eighteen-year-old!

I received a decent 2:1 degree and went on to study for a doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry, ultimately staying at Balliol for more than seven years.

Curiously, I was recently chatting to Mrs Truss. It transpired we both read the same subject for our degrees. At the same university. At the same college. And, bizarrely, in the same bedroom (ten years apart, I hasten to add!). The chance of any one of those is relatively small but- especially as Balliol has several hundred bedrooms- altogether it must be statistically impossible!

Q) What made you decide to become a teacher? …and have you ever done a different job?

My doctorate was supervised by Sabine Flitsch who was one of only two female chemistry lecturers in Oxford (out of a maybe eighty lecturers). She was very keen to attract more girls into science, so I helped her to run an annual workshop aimed at giving girls a flavour of studying chemistry at university. I enjoyed the workshops so much more than my research that, as soon as I had completed my doctorate, I trained to be a teacher (I defected to Magdalene College, Cambridge). The rest is history…….

Q) When did you start working at Concord?

I started in 2002, moving here after 7 years at Tonbridge School in Kent, so this is my twentieth year here. It sounds a lot but it has gone shockingly quickly.

Q) What were your first impressions of the College?

The College was very small (about 300 students), very green, and very friendly, and everybody made me feel very welcome, so I settled in very quickly. The students worked hard but also played hard- so there was always a concert or competition going on somewhere. If I had any questions, Tony Morris- the Principal- was always around somewhere to answer them. In fact, he amazed me by appearing to be everywhere all the time. I never found out how he managed it: I suspect he either had a Time Turner (like Hermione Granger) or several clones!

As an aside: Over my twenty years, the College has changed almost beyond recognition.  When I arrived, there was only one Sports Hall. The West End, Paul House, Taylors, Wrekin House, the Science Block, the Jubilee Building, the complex containing Estates, IT, and the laundry, and the road to the new main entrance were still to be built. Hall Meadow was still a farmer’s field. Acton Pigot, Old School, The Warren, The Smithy and Cherry Orchard were private houses with no students, and the car park was tiny.

I initially lived in Bell House as a houseparent. Between us, Ernie Marsh, Mark Chadwick and I looked after about 100 upper-school boys in Bell House, Orchard House and Old Walls. Of course, there were no maglocks, lanyards or cameras in those days so students could sneak out of their houses at night, which made Saturday night room checks a nightmare! The layout of the College was also very different: the Lower School students were taught in the old primary school in the village (now Accounts) and in a science lab in the middle of what is now Garden View. The old Science Block (now the Castle Block) had only three labs and a few classrooms; the library was in the Old Chapel, the old West End is now the library, and the art studios were above what is now the library! I wonder if they’ll ever get round to finishing that barn by the tennis courts….

Q) How has teaching Chemistry changed since you first became a teacher?

I started teaching in 1994 which was just before computers became a feature in every classroom- and definitely pre-internet- and my first lessons were based around a blackboard. In fact, the only praise I ever received from my teacher-training course was, ‘You recovered well after you dropped the chalk!’. There were relatively few videos which were played via a VCR machine onto a small television and I wrote notes on the board for the students to copy down into their exercise books. There were very few distractions for the students, so you were mostly guaranteed the students’ attention.  If I wanted to show the students an experiment, I had to carry it out with them gathered around the teacher’s bench around so they could see it and I often had to come up with a yet-another excuse for why it wasn’t working!

Nowadays, everything is based around the computer with fantastic tools such Powerpoint, OneNote, and the internet. Students can immediately access my notes for the entire year and test their understanding through past paper questions on their tablets. If I need to demonstrate a reaction, I can project a video clip of it from youtube onto a huge screen and the experiment works every time! On the downside, students can contact me 24/7 via email or Teams and they always have one eye on those pesky mobile phones.

Q) Can you tell me if any of your Chemistry practicals have gone wrong and what happened? 

Fortunately, 99.99% of the practicals work as they should but when they do go wrong, they tend to go very wrong and people get hurt. Not funny and always potentially career-ending. Have you noticed that chemistry teachers age prematurely, have nails bitten down to the quick, and have a morbid fascination about how soon they can collect their pension…..

Q) Have you got any favourite classroom jokes you can share with us?

I have two types of joke and they are both bad. The first is the standard chemistry joke such as:

Q: What is the name of the molecule CH2O?

A: Seawater’ (as in C-water).

            Q: If H2O is the formula for water, what is the formula for ice?

            A: H2O cubed.

            Two atoms are walking down the street and they run in to each other. One says to the other,        "Are you all right?"

            "No, I lost an electron!"

            "Are you sure?"

            "Yes, I'm positive!"

The other is typified by:

“Two peanuts were walking down the road. One was assaulted.”

 (as in one was a salted peanut).

The joke itself isn’t funny. What is funny is watching the half of the class that understands it explain it to the half that doesn’t. It usually takes about five minutes. It’s a similar thing with ‘Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like bananas.’

On reflection, people like me probably shouldn’t be allowed to teach in an international school!

Q) What would you say to any student thinking of studying Chemistry at uni?

Do it. For three reasons. Firstly, you will gain a very deep understanding science: everything you see, smell, touch or eat is Chemistry. Why things are red, blue, smelly, hard, soft, wet, or cold is Chemistry. You are Chemistry. With the knowledge acquired from a degree in Chemistry, you will never look at the world in the same way again. Secondly, chemists are among the most employable graduates: the analytical, numerical and practical skills you will develop are all highly transferable and are desired by a variety of professions. Among my contemporaries are barristers, accountants, management consultants, economists, brand managers, industrial chemists and academics. Thirdly, the world needs chemists to design the batteries for their phones and cars, the polymers for the latest fashions, the fertilisers that help keeps us all fed, and the strange orange material that my local take-away restaurant has started to put in its kebabs…..
 

Q) Can you share any more memories with with us?

There are so many: Saturday night room checks in Bell stretching to 2, 3 or 4 am….  Yernar Ryskaliyev asking me random questions about custard in every single F3 lesson…. Qi Jun (Tan) convincing me to wear her zebra onesie. Why did I ever agree?… Jasmine Lee wearing rabbit ears for most of the year….. Not being able to distinguish Vanessa Khoo from Valerie Khoo. Or was it Valerie from Vanessa?..... Being swapped with Fiona Parry when my set was photographed for the college website (because I wasn’t pretty enough)…. Nigel Kraal asking me to teach him some organic chemistry the day before the final exam. ‘Which bit of organic chemistry?’, I asked. “Sir, you don’t understand…. all of it”

Ramona Ravikumar: In 2003, in my first ever lesson with a January set and -it turns out- her first ever lesson in Concord- Ramona decided to teach me some basic Malay. She taught me how to say ‘Saya Bodoh’, which she told me meant ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Kamu Bodoh’ or ‘Good Afternoon’. I found out later they actually mean ‘I am stupid, and ‘You are stupid’. Brave girl!

Stuart Beech, on the first day I met him in 2002, driving me in a minibus through a tunnel that was just high enough for the van-but forgetting about the roof rack (Crunch!)

Samson Lee and Arthur Tan in drag….. Ashvina Segaran never writing a word in lessons and still getting one of the highest marks in the country…… Teaching remotely from my garage during the lockdown with the likes of Barney Cansdale and Yehia Shawkat explaining to me how to use OneNote and Teams (“Sir, you are muted” and “Sir, you’re not sharing your screen” and “No, Sir. The other button.” And, of course, how could I forget Gaby Buntaro’s “Sir, can you please turn off your camera: I can see right up your nose” )