Mr Hayter writes: “It really has been a privilege to teach here, and I will certainly miss my very good friends and colleagues and the wonderful students of course (I’m contractually obliged to say that!).  

It does feel like the right time for a change for me. I was a teacher for two years in Ghana with Voluntary Service Overseas at the beginning of my career, so there is a sense of symmetry about finishing my teaching career abroad again. 

I will leave with so many great memories of life at LEH but here are just a few:

Being fully out of my comfort zone doing various things for charity including playing netball and lacrosse (why did I never get asked to play croquet?), appearing in Would I Lie to You? (featuring some truly shocking stories from staff), lip-syncing as Liam Gallagher and butchering Hotel California in a Guitar Hero Band challenge where I was shown up by Mr Piper who had clearly been practising!

Regular appearances in U6 school pantos. Recently I seem to have been typecast as myself wearing a white coat and wielding a croquet mallet but back in the day I seem to remember featuring in some humiliating dance sequences along with Mr O’ Rourke as part of first One Direction, and then the Inbetweeners. Rather more enjoyable was popping up right at the end of one panto as the ISI Inspector, causing Mr Nicholson who was Deputy Head at the time, to faint with the shock.

The 2014 China Trip with lots of games involving forfeits around the Lazy Susan every meal and having KFC delivered to the council room of the Regional Communist Party Headquarters in Shanghai when we’d finally had enough of all the fantastic Chinese food!

The 2019 Russia trip where I spent a lovely night on the sleeper train between Moscow and St Petersburg with a cabin all to myself.  Meanwhile Mrs Hughes, Sister Brew, Mrs Miller (Miss Randall at the time) and Mrs FitzGerald were somehow all jammed into one tiny cabin with four bunk beds next door.  They got their revenge by nominating me for yet more humiliating dancing - this time on stage with a Russian dance troupe!

The 2010 Uganda trip which involved three amazing weeks with Miss Espinola and two L6 students Hannah Davies and Suzie Zitter, visiting our exchange school in Uganda. We were driving around in a beaten-up, cockroach-infested Land Rover like a slightly dysfunctional family with the kids squabbling in the back over what music we should play and mum and dad arguing over directions.  Highlights or lowlights of driving included the adrenaline rush of coming face to face with a male lion in the middle of the road at night and a similar adrenaline rush when we ran over someone’s chicken and there was almost a diplomatic incident.  Eventually we limped back to the airport at the end of the trip after a safari and a couple of breakdowns, covered in red dust as a window had jammed open, having replaced the fan belt with a pair of old tights.

My abiding memories of LEH will probably be around the fun that is had by both the staff and students throughout the year.  It is a school where everyone works hard and aims high but where we are also part of a community which knows how to have a good time. I will definitely miss being at LEH, but I will stay in touch as much as I can and there will be Facebook posts of course! 

The parting advice I’m giving (somewhat ironically given my name) is: “Don’t be a Hater”.  Be kind to others: take time and care to build them up and not knock them down.  Treat everyone with the respect you would expect from them.”

Mr Hayter

If you are logged into your Holles Connect account you will be able to see a selection of photos from Mr Hayter’s school trips over the years below.