Unthinkable.

On Saturday a good mates son committed suicide. What do you say to something like this how do you approach it. I must admit it is a hollow feeling and the idea that he was at the start of his life. 17 last year at high school world at his feet. How is it that we can feel so lost and helpless that we do things like this? What was going on for this young man that he thought this was the only way? How can I help?

Today.

Thank you Tom Latham for making the start to my day just brilliant. Thank you to to the Weather gods who made the sun shine and to the students who have just performed so wonderfully today. Joe brought me his dictated story and read it to me. he was awesome. Maisie and Eden are now on chapter books, their stories have 31 pages this is so cool when you are only 5. Lorenzo was on fire in Maths with Mrs Graham so to were Carter and Erin. Just a great day to be in charge of a school!!

Help.

How do we get more of you in to our evenings? Threats? Torture? Wine and Cheese?We really need to have more of you in to listen to the latest and greatest of what we are trying to do! So how do we do it?

Crossing the line.

I guess its great when parents gets involved in their children's education, I mean thats what we want them to do.They also get involved in their sport, once again we want them to.Where though does the line get drawn? Where does it become a line that is being stepped over. As teachers we are becoming accustomed to parents arriving in our work spaces and being told how to do our jobs. have you tried that with your GP? Or your mechanic? If you are going to do this can you please tell me when and I am sure our PTA will be able to sell tickets to this event.

Real life learning

Nothing like an injury to let you know you need to step back and have a wee look at what you are doing. It's called real life learning and if we want to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves we may need to look at the steps we take to achieve them. At the moment, in education, the drive is collaborative teaching and so we need to look at the steps we take to get to this or do we simply experiment with it. I mean we have only been experimenting with your children since teaching started.Education for the masses really started with the industrial revolution with factory managers needing large holding pits for the children of their workers who were still too young to work for them.Have things change much from those days? I would like to think a hell of a lot. Numbers are still not the greatest, powers that be still fund us at 1 to 26 in the senior school and 1 to 16 in the junior school and that still is too many children in a space.Now , though we want to put 50 kids into a space with 2 teachers. Good or bad? I guess this dependent on how it its managed and timetabled. What do you think?