Wordles

To begin with, let me say a massive thank you for the overwhelming response that I received from fellow blippers for my 300th yesterday. I copied all of the text from my blip comment and your personal comments to me into the website I use for creating these word jigsaws....and this is what it created It really does mean a lot. I have managed to reply to about half of the people who left comments, and I'm still wading through the rest....please bear with me :-)

If you type "wordle" into google, you'll find the link to the website that creates these word jumbles. I use them sometimes for presenting key words to the students at school. Words that are repeated often in a section of text are bigger. Can be quite interesting seeing how many times a word appears - and it is intelligent too as it discounts words that commonly appear in your chosen language (and it will work in a range of languages too!)

Anyway, my Wordle sums up my day. Its been full of ups and downs and I literally haven't stopped. You don't need to read on, I'm writing down my day for posterity's sake more than anything else...because in twelve months time I might want a reminder of how extreme life can be in school sometimes.

Day started with ups and downs straight away...I apologised to the full staff in advance of what I knew would be a pretty dire presentation to them all this afternoon (not from me, we had to have a team from the Department of Comedy and Science Fiction - the Education department of the Government - come and deliver to us about reforms in Education). Some random comments about shoe boxes and coat hangers caused laughter and mayhem, and a sad, in fact heart breaking tale of a student, who was sent to Pakistan last year.

This young man was sent to pakistan by his family last year, after his family decided that his behaviour was not as they wanted it to be. Since then, the boy has somehow found the means to get himself back to England without his father knowing as he was so desperately unhappy there. Since he returned, he has been sleeping on a friend's sofa, and has been labouring on a building site to earn enough money to buy himself a new school uniform! He arrived in school yesterday, unannounced, and said he wanted to return. The boy is 15 years old. We can't admit him as he has no legal guardian here, and so have had to involve social services to ensure that he is placed in foster care. Its heartbreaking, but also shows a huge degree of ingenuity at finding himself back here without any adult assistance!


I then did a bit of data analysis and then went to our leadership team meeting. That was where the day went a little down...as we are having to make decisions at the moment about staffing for the future of the school, based on reduced budget. Other issues are compounding matters and ultimately this means that we HAVE to lose staff over the next couple of years. Which we don't want to do....certainly not by any means like redundancy...so a big black cloud is sat over our heads.

My day then lifted, with a double lesson with my senior group, who were as charming and cooperative as they usually are, making huge progress during the lesson and making me so proud of them. They left with a spring in their step as most of them were able to finish off a piece of coursework, and I was left with a nice fuzzy warm glow because they had done themselves proud.

Then the day got quickly into territory that makes me annoyed and frustrated, where the behaviour of two students, intending to pull a prank and not realising what they were doing, caused me to have to send a number of students home. The prank - putting fibre glass insulation down the backs of other students shirts. I have to say that this is not normal behaviour for 99.9% of our students, but sadly, every school, no matter how good, has some children who seem not to have any respect for their environment or for the other people in that environment. Sadly this was the case today. One student copped for it straight away and co-operated. The other, who is on his final warning, denied that he had anything to do with it, despite witness evidence to the contrary. Fortunately we have great staff, and supportive parents, so it was very quickly handled and the youngsters who were affected were dispatched home with instructions to shower, not rub or scrub, but let it all wash down. We'll see what comes of it tomorrow.

Then found out that a parent of a particularly unco-operative student was refusing to allow him to complete a sanction imposed by his Head of Year. This student, along with 4 others,, chose to disrupt my assembly with the year group on Monday. They were moved to the front of the room to sit in front of me as a result, and at the end of assembly were told that each of them in next week's assembly would be presenting something - i.e. they could stand up and take part of the assembly, so that they could see what we have to do and prepare to lead the assemblies - and to make the point about manners, respect etc (ironic that my assembly was on the topic of knowledge and ignorance). Anyway, this particular parent has history of refusing to let her son complete detentions etc, and so today sent what can only be described as a snotty note saying that he would not be doing his part in the assembly and that as he had been 'humiliated' by having to sit at the front of assembly, that and saying sorry 'would suffice in this instance'. Well, aside from the fact that AT NO POINT has he said sorry, I'm afraid it wouldn't suffice anyway. The Head of Year in question is as furious as me, begging the question "do I ring her up and tell her how to be a parent? No, so why does she think she can ring and tell me how to do my job?" Most likely, the Boss will be involved tomorrow...

Whilst dealing with this, the team from DCSF arrived to set up for their presentation. We sat through that ... it was not inspiring in the least, although the one bit that was (a fantastic video about the future of education and employment, which would make a fantastic aspiration raising presentation for the kids) which I asked the team if I could have a copy of - not available to schools for use in house as it is copyright protected. So much for raising aspirations then!

Short break (and time to leg it outside and up the road for a fag!) and then into a staff briefing, to explain the situation about staffing and potential impact over the next three years. Very emotional, significant number of the team understanding and coming 'onside' with what we were asking them to consider for the sake of retaining colleagues, but some not coming into the fold, for a range of reasons, at this time. The problem is that for some people in the room, it has already become very personal, as colleagues know that fixed term contracts might not be extended next year. And some colleagues, who are so 100% in support of our school, our kids and the principles that we try to work to with everyone in school, find it exceptionally hard to accept opposiing views, particularly when their subject area is one that is going to be hit, and hit hard, and there's nothing we can do to change that. So I have had to console a member of staff, and try to rationalise things with her, and get her to step back for a couple of days before trying to stand up and fight the corner that she wants to fight, and that we want to fight for - because she can't do it when she is so emotionally charged about it. I respect her very much - and she is a force to behold, great teacher, fantastic manager...difficult to see someone so clearly upset with others because they don't necessarily see the bigger picture (only how things impact on them).

Difficult.

Bath, wine, bed.....

If you've read this far...bloody hell....go get a drink :-)