Nick Mair BY ROBERT BAYLIS
laser show beamed on to the school buildings for the boarders, and his flying of drones and kites which could take aerial photographs and videos of DC London and DC overseas pupils grouped together to depict ‘pengyou’, the Chinese character combination for Friendship, during the first Olympiad, in 2019.
Nick started at Dulwich in September 1998, via the British School in Brussels and King’s College School, Wimbledon. He brought with him a highly innovative and effective approach to Modern Languages teaching, based upon a personal belief that languages can come alive for all pupils who are given excellent, inspirational teaching. He is, above all, a teacher who is never content to remain still, and is always looking for ways that pupils can best learn languages, be it by teaching Spanish through blind chocolate tastings, running Year 7 engineering days in French, or simply helping reluctant Year 11s by giving them nuts and bolts to play with in lessons, to help them speak. As a practitioner, he is second to none, with both colleagues and pupils praising his skills. Nick was described by a Deputy Master as a ‘magician in the classroom’, and one former pupil recently noted that ‘walking into Mr Mair’s classroom was like walking into Spain itself’. His commitment to placing pupil confidence and linguistic competency at the heart of his practice allowed him to change the perception and popularity of language learning, within his team, within the wider College and, more recently, on a national level. Nick was one of the early champions of using IT in the Modern Languages classroom. He is an accomplished programmer himself, and many elements of the pro- grams that he wrote and successfully rolled out to the department may be seen in apps that are now the staple fare of Modern Languages. His research paper on the gamification of teaching pre-dated the post-2012 surge towards the online, cloud-based provision of teaching aids and online resources. His enthusiasm for innovation is legendary. Examples of this include his running the French Aviation Society, his creation of a Lunar New Year
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