Here we are again! How did that happen? One minute it is all new uniforms, shoes that hurt and school jumpers/skirts/trousers that are too big (and that is just the staff) and then suddenly we are in the most hectic yet magical time of the year for schools- Christmas!
I love the festive season and I admit to being one of those irritating folk who get organised early (still doesn’t stop me buying those wee “last minute” things right up until Christmas Eve) but, the bulk of the presents are bought and the bulk of the cards are now written. I am, by nature fairly organised; schools are always in the present but thinking weeks/months ahead. Schools are always looking forward and seeing what needs to be done, changed, tweaked so being organised is a bonus when things come flying in like Santa’s reindeer without satnav. We have just had three days in-service days which seemed, in the run up, a great opportunity to get things done, make milestone checks of how things are progressing and developing and generally have time to check that we are all still upright and breathing! However, as the Bard would say. The best laid plans……..
We had a busy schedule organised with the emphasis on working together with our Learning Community; the schools that feed into the same secondary school. In our case there are seven primary schools and our colleagues at the academy. We Heedies get together every month but our wider staff don’t get lots of opportunities to get together to talk about what we are doing. Talking things over is good. Teachers like to talk, and most like to talk education and especially their class/school. We had the opportunity to get together and find out about more about the RAFA strategies which we are involved in. Now, you may have perked up thinking, as I did, Nadal, tennis and all sorts of things that make you (me) smile but in actual fact it is Raising Attainment For All. A Scottish Government programme aimed at doing just that – making things better for every child in Scottish education. We then went on to science and staff had the opportunity to work together, try out scientific experiments and discuss how we raise the profile of science in our learning and teaching. There were lots of other learning opportunities going on too and actually, as a staff we had very little time all together in the same place doing the same things! We’ll have a bit of catching up to do when we get back into school for the final three weeks of term. For the awfully clever DHT and I it was a wee bit patchy as always with our time set aside for things we had to do disappearing quicker than Santa up a chimney. Mostly this had to do with a JCB digger, brickwork and fences but that’s another story!
While all this learning, debating and catching up was going on the Christmas decorations were going up around the school. After the children left on Tuesday last week, staff got together and put up all the decorations that had been made for our hall and the nativity banner went up over the stage. Christmas trees appeared in all our main areas and boxes of decorations were brought from dark, cobwebbed places by the janitor. On Tuesday we are all off on our annual jaunt to the pantomime at a local theatre. The camels have been half way to Bethlehem for about a week now and the rehearsals are building! Costumes are being fitted and altered; we had to substitute our lead camel one year due to illness. Unfortunately our understudy was a good half metre taller than our original person so on the day the camel costume legs had more of a Knickerbocker look than we had intended! I always marvel that our very youngest pupils do such a wonderful job of learning lines, songs, actions and where to walk on stage without falling off (though we have had a couple of near things). Staff tend to get more and more frazzled as December approaches and glitter, tinsel and the sound of staplers abound. In amongst all of this you have the awfully clever DHT mumbling and muttering usually while surrounded by microphones that have stopped working, packs of batteries that don’t fit and children who are shedding said glitter and tinsel all over him! He may take some convincing but I do believe that it is the best time of the year in school – I concede that this view may be coloured by the festive food and beverages though!