Before the Rain

There are photographs that are taken because something looks beautiful. Then there are photographs that are taken because they preserve a feeling.

This was the latter.

I clicked this photograph while leaving school for the day, standing on the stairs of the Nalanda Library, looking across at the IB flagship building of Manchester Global School. Above it hung a sky heavy with monsoon clouds, dark enough to promise rain but patient enough to hold back for a little while longer. It was one of those fleeting moments when architecture, weather and memory seemed to settle into a single frame.

The library has quickly become my favourite place on campus.

Not merely because it houses books, but because it houses possibilities. Every time I stand there, I find myself imagining what it will become over the years. I imagine tables occupied by students poring over history books for Internal Assessments, others debating philosophical questions for Theory of Knowledge, someone discovering Toni Morrison or Carol Ann Duffy for the first time, another trying to make sense of Shakespeare's tragedies, while a group in the corner wrestles with citations for an Extended Essay. Outside, rain lashes against the windows. Inside, the quiet hum of learning continues uninterrupted.

It is an image that feels strangely familiar.

Perhaps because it reminds me of another library, another season, another version of myself.

Many years ago, at St. Berchman's College in Kerala, I spent countless hours reading in the library while the monsoon transformed the world outside into shades of grey and green. Those afternoons were not remarkable when they happened. Looking back now, however, I realise they shaped me more than I knew. Those shelves introduced me to literature, history, philosophy, translation studies and ideas that would eventually define both my academic life and my career.

Some places quietly prepare us for the future without announcing what they are doing.

As I complete my first year at Manchester Global School and prepare to begin another academic year, I carry that same sense of anticipation.

This year is particularly exciting because my academic life will stretch across three disciplines that constantly speak to one another.

Language and Literature asks what it means to be human through stories, poems and language.

History asks why societies become what they are and whether the past can ever truly be understood.

Theory of Knowledge asks perhaps the most unsettling question of all: how do we know what we claim to know?

Teaching these subjects together feels less like managing three courses and more like participating in one long conversation about human civilisation. A historical event finds echoes in literature. A philosophical question challenges historical certainty. A poem unsettles assumptions about knowledge itself. The boundaries between disciplines begin to disappear, and students slowly realise that education was never meant to exist inside isolated compartments.

That thought genuinely excites me.

Ironically, the vacation never really felt like a vacation.

Much of it disappeared into reading, annotating texts, revisiting historical scholarship, updating lesson plans, studying the latest curriculum expectations and thinking about classroom discussions that have not yet happened. There is something deeply satisfying about preparing to teach. Every text demand to be read again because both the reader and the world have changed since the previous reading. Every return reveal something new.

Good books have a peculiar ability to make one feel intellectually alive.

They remind us that learning is not simply the acquisition of information. It is a way of remaining curious.

This academic year also carries a different emotional weight.

Our Diploma Programme students will sit their IB examinations at the end of the year. By this time next year, we will be waiting for results that represent not merely grades but years of reading, writing, questioning, revising, failing, improving and persevering.

As teachers, we often become invested in those journeys far more deeply than we admit.

When students succeed, we celebrate with them. When they struggle, we revisit our own teaching as much as their learning. Education has always been a shared enterprise.

The gathering clouds in this photograph seem appropriate.

Rain does not merely interrupt the landscape; it prepares it for growth.

The beginning of an academic year feels remarkably similar. New students arrive carrying ambitions, anxieties, misconceptions and extraordinary potential. Over the coming months, classrooms will become places where ideas collide, perspectives evolve and confidence slowly takes shape.

I hope this year becomes one of rigorous scholarship. I hope our classrooms are filled with genuine curiosity rather than performative participation.

I hope students leave every lesson with more questions than answers.

Most importantly, I hope we remain uncompromising about academic standards.

Education deserves seriousness. Students deserve teachers who continue to read, continue to question, continue to learn and continue to refine their craft. Subject expertise is not an optional luxury in teaching; it is the foundation upon which trust is built. Nothing discourages a student more than discovering that the person standing in front of the classroom has stopped being a learner.

The responsibility to remain intellectually alive belongs to us before it belongs to them.

As those monsoon clouds gather over Manchester Global School, we wait for the first rains of the season.

More importantly, we wait for our students.

The classrooms are ready. The library is waiting. The books are open.

And somewhere between literature, history and the philosophy of knowledge, another academic year is about to begin. #ManchesterGlobalSchool #IBEducation #IBDiplomaProgramme #LanguageAndLiterature #TheoryOfKnowledge #HistoryEducation #Teaching #Education #Libraries #AcademicExcellence #LifelongLearning #CriticalThinking #TeachersWhoRead #NewAcademicYear #MonsoonThoughts