Thought For The Day – Tuesday 30^th June 2026

We have guests and visitors in school today, as we welcome our new members of staff. They will bring their wonderful expertise, and story, to The Bishop’s Stortford High School, which will, in turn, inspire them.  Thank you to Mr. Dickens for his brilliant leadership in this vital area.

“The world works best when everyone gets to live as they truly are.” (Jodie Foster)

“You have the power to use Love as a guiding principle.” (Jodie Foster)

Pride Month celebrates L.G.B.T.Q.+ identity and community.

Pride Month celebrates who people are.

Pride Month celebrates who we are.

For the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community is the T.B.S.H.S. Community. 

And vice-versa.

The greatly respected actor, director, producer, and writer, Jodie Foster, is a (L.G.B.T.Q.+) role model.

Jodie Foster has literally spent a lifetime in acting and the film industry.  And still.

Throughout,  Jodie Foster has maintained her authenticity, emotional intelligence, goodness, honesty, humility, humour,  integrity, respect,  resilience, and values.

Jodie Foster has focussed on family, love, art and work, self, and, social reflection and transformation.

In a very public industry, in a very public world, perhaps in a too public world,  Jodie Foster has respectfully maintained her privacy.

As a woman, as an L.G.B.T.Q.+ woman, leader in film, Jodie Foster has been, and is, ground-breaking.

A graduate in African American studies at Yale University,  Jodie Foster has always been committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Jodie Foster’s career and life as a whole has not been without massive challenges.

In a recent interview with  “The Daily Telegraph”,  a picture from which is above, Jodie Foster said:

“I feel very lucky. I do not know what happened – my 50s were tough, because society gives you these weird thought processes about how you are supposed to compete with people half your age, and compete with an image you had of yourself when you were in your 20s.  I was just filled with anxiety and not-enough-ness. And then something happened when I turned 60. I felt, ‘Oh wow, I don’t care.’ I think my work is better than it has ever been, and I am happier at work, and it is also to do with recognising it is other people’s time, and being able to step back and figure out how to help people tell stories that have not been heard before.”

In an interview last year with her former Professor at Yale University, Henry Louis Gates Junior,  where, amongst many things,  Jodie Foster talked of the formative years for young people of between 17 and 22, wherever young people begin their adult lives and career, and the importance of motherhood,  Jodie Foster said: “It is possible to make that choice because of the pioneers that came before me. The people who made it possible for me to be sitting here.  I grew up in a different time.  I am so proud and so encouraged by the transformation that our cultures have made, and by some tiny part that hopefully I have brought to the equation to help that.  I wish I could have done more. But I only could do as much as I could do… The real work is the work of living. The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was being anxious and self-conscious and not being confident.  When I walk on to a set of young people, my great contribution of wisdom is just to take their hand and say “Don’t worry so much. It will be fine.”  That “Zen mastery” is having confidence enough in your soul, in your ability to connect to The Truth, the part that is conscious and the part that is unconscious.  You have the power to use Love as a guiding principle and be strategic.”