Founder´s Day

Ms. Andrea Pelaratti wrote a Speech for Founder`s Day 2014 which we share for everybody to learn and remember about our history.

Good afternoon, everyone. It is an honour to welcome you all, authorities, teachers, students and parents, to celebrate Villa Devoto School’s 106th anniversary.

Although forgetting our memories is unavoidable it is also healthy, so we will just flip through the history that has made Villa Devoto School, the memorable school it is today. However, we should all keep our school memories bright and polished, so that a richer past will help us understand what our school is like today: a source of love, affection and care which strives to make meaningful and authentic learning enjoyable, in an atmosphere entrenched in positive core values.

Back in 1908, Villa Devoto was a small neighbourhood , where several British families, whose men worked in the Pacific Railway line, today Ferrocarril San Martin lived. Therefore, VDS started as a typically British boys` school to cater for the needs of these families. Some years after, Miss Alice Pope Ogan, a lady of 50 years old at that time, started a girls school in the Anglican Church, which still stands in Jose Luis Cantilo, a few blocks from our premises. This was a typical English school , which means only English was taught, although they had subjects like French and Spanish as well. These 60 girls attended school both in the morning and in the afternoon, just like you! Next, at the beginning of the 50s, the school moved to P Moran St, where it stands nowadays, and became a mixed Anglo Argentinean school. As time went by, the Argentinean students outnumbered the English ones, shaping the school`s philosophy with the characteristics it holds today.

Briefly speaking and so that nobody gets bored, the facts I have just mentioned, are only some of the many essentials that have made VDS what the school is today. The street where VDS was originally founded has changed, the building has grown and has changed, the teachers and heads have changed, society has changed, parents and students` expectations have changed, both the meaning and the aims of education have changed, but what I personally feel has not changed at all

throughout these 106 years… is the spirit of struggle , effort, love and care which inspired such people as Miss Ogan and her followers, us teachers and heads present here today, to carry out a profession which is so all embracing , so rewarding, as the possibility of helping children become respectable adults.

Just as the 106th anniversary is the right time to reflect on how far we have come, it is equally important for us to look forward to our hopes and dreams for the future and to follow our hearts. And that, I can assure you, will make all the difference. For all the hard work carried out within the boundaries of our school, I request a big, giant clapping, not only to Miss Ogan , but also to all of us present here today, who do what we believe is great work, who love what we do and for those of us who never settle and who have managed to keep Miss Ogans’s dream alive.

Thank you.

Categorised in: Primaria