After leaving Roedean, Zeba (Alexandra Kalim, No.4, 1976 -81) never expected to have anything much to do with schools ever again. But she found herself switching careers from journalism to education in her mid-20s and discovered a real love of teaching and later, educational leadership. She has worked in state and independent schools in the UK as well as international schools in Beijing, Brussels and now, São Paulo. She has taught English, Drama and Theatre Studies, Classics and Humanities. Out of work, she loves walking, cooking, road trips and reading, as well as hanging out with family and her lovely dog, Zazie, a poodle/newfoundland cross. You can follow her podcast, 60 Weeks, 60 Books on Apple, Spotify and Audible

apple:   https://lnkd.in/dd-ezPwD
audible: https://lnkd.in/ddeQi7kR
spotify:  https://lnkd.in/ddTPFemd

What is your favourite memory of Roedean?

My best memories are of hanging out with friends – I remember a very silly afternoon doing a dance routine to Earth Wind and Fire in the 5th Form common room, our post O Level trip to France, cooking for each other in Lawrence House, and school plays – I particularly enjoyed The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

What was the best piece of advice you were given whilst at School?

I’m going to be honest here, I don’t remember any advice from teachers! But the best teaching I had was from my Maths teacher, Mrs Shipp, who made sure I took time to read questions carefully and left time to check the answers even more carefully. She gave up lunchtimes to help us get through our O level Maths, and I was probably more thrilled by my B in Maths than in any of my other results.

When you were at Roedean, what did you want to be when you ‘grew-up’?

I really wanted to act – I loved drama, the ESU exams we took in public speaking, and one of my best experiences was directing Guys and Dolls for House 4. I also wanted to be a journalist and started up an underground magazine. And I wanted to be a romance writer. I have managed to act – I directed a production of Hamlet whilst I was living in China, with three performances on the Great Wall of China and a further six performances in a classic Peking opera theatre in Beijing. Unfortunately, our Hamlet broke his ankle halfway through one of the performances on the Great Wall, and I had to step in to perform the part in Beijing. We couldn’t cancel because we needed the money to pay for his treatment in Hong Kong, so I performed the part, and it absolutely cured me of any desire to be a professional actor. There is a further Roedean connection as our Hamlet, Andrew Mallett, is the brother of one of my oldest friends from school, Shelly Mallett, also House 4.

What are you now you’ve grown up?

I am now a Deputy Head at an international school in São Paulo. This is not what I expected! I did become a journalist after university and really loved it. I wrote about engineering and then energy economics, and travelled widely, which was great preparation for my teaching career. I switched to education because I wanted to move to China to be with my then boyfriend, now my husband of nearly 30 years. I have taught in the UK, Belgium, China and now Brazil. I also did manage to become a published romance writer: I wrote five regency romances between 2000 and 2005, but I then took a masters in educational management and leadership and got more involved in academic writing.

What does your job involve?

Every day is different, and there is a lot of crisis management, both big and small. At a strategic level, day to day, I have two main areas of responsibility in school – safeguarding and digital development. In some ways these come together because social media and smartphones give rise to so many concerns around mental health, online safety, cyber-bullying and a range of addictive types of behaviour. But at the same time, it is really important for us to prepare our students and staff for the excitement of swift developments in technology, such as the explosion of opportunity around AI and alternate reality environments. These are major game-changers in terms of how we learn, how we teach and how we prepare ourselves and our children for the future. There is a lot to think about, and the area that most intrigues me is the way we need to bring together human connection, which is so important for us to develop and flourish, plus technology and also the interplay between our deepening understanding of adolescent brain development, learning and thinking.

What have you done that you are most proud of?

I prefer to think of this as major milestones, otherwise, it sounds a bit immodest. When I was in my 20s, I became an editor of a newsletter owned by the FT and I was really proud at that time to have achieved that status in the male-dominated field of energy economics. Producing and directing both Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Beijing were real highlights for me. Later, I would say that completing my MA in Education is still an achievement I am really proud of – I was working full time, had two young boys and a very supportive husband, so that helped. This year, I am taking my GCSE in Portuguese and if I pass, I will be very proud of that!

What are the three objects you would take with you to a desert island?

Swiss Army Penknife, infinite paper and a pen with infinite ink.

What books have had a significant influence on you and why?

So many! I have been exploring these in a podcast which I began earlier this year because I suddenly realised that I was closing in on 60. I began to think about what I most valued and appreciated, and I think even from before I could read, I loved words, stories, and then books. In 60 Weeks, 60 Books, I began exploring the books that really shaped me, that I remember really vividly. I am currently looking at my teenage years, which were mostly spent at Roedean, and it is an eclectic collection. But there are three particular pieces, two of which I will be exploring in the coming weeks, that really resonate for me, that I return to again and again.

The first is Middlemarch, George Eliot’s amazing (and amazingly long) depiction of life in a Staffordshire town in the mid-19th century. It ends with a beautiful paragraph, which I won’t quote in full, but the heart is this idea: ‘the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts’. It is that key idea that however little we value ourselves, our lives are valuable, have significance, even if we ourselves are swiftly forgotten.

The second one is Hamlet’s comment to Horatio: ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.’ The more that has happened to me and around me, for good or ill, the more I believe in the idea that we need to be ready – this doesn’t mean passively waiting for things, but to accept what is in our control, and what is not.

The final piece of writing that I go back to over and over is a poem by the Polish author Czeslaw Milosz. This was the first poem of his that I read, and it is still my favourite. I saw it on the Tube one day as I was travelling from central London to Heathrow, and that 45 minutes was enough for me to memorise it. It is called And Yet the Books, and it looks at how even amidst conflict and turbulence and attempts to destroy them, books are the guardians of human ideas and emotions. The final two lines are a real solace:  

‘Yet the books will be there on the shelves,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.’

Whenever I feel gloomy about the state of the world, the difficulties we face as humans, I think of this and feel hopeful again. 

What is on your bucket list?

Mainly travel goals – we moved to Brazil two years ago and have travelled a good deal, but I still want to see many places in Brazil and more widely in the rest of Latin America. I would still like to write a best-selling novel!

If you had one year and unlimited funds, what would you do?

This goes back to the bucket list: I’d buy a really good all-terrain vehicle and drive round Latin America, down through Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. I really want to go to Easter Island as well.

I would also like to fund charities supporting girls’ education. I think both the Malala Fund and CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education are amazing organisations, running programmes that are making genuine improvements to female leadership, agency and development, and I would want to support these in particular. We know that female literacy and completion of secondary education have a powerful direct impact on the overall development and welfare of countries.

The final thing I would like to do would be to give a big chunk of money to two organisations, GiveDirectly and to Kiva Microfunds. Both these organisations provide money directly to recipients and we know that this is the single most effective way of using funding in developing countries and regions to raise people out of poverty.  Both of these organisations provide people not just with funds, but do it in a way that is respectful, giving dignity and choice to recipients, and they also really change life for individuals.