I Love Paris

originally posted on https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/cl/PointstoPonder/

I have an eclectic music collection but the “standards” are never far away so listening to Ella Fitzgerald on a very rainy Sunday is always ideal. This morning one of my favourites came on about one of my favourite places-Paris. Given the dreadful events of Friday I stopped and didn’t start working again for several minutes.
How do you make any sense of the actions taken on Friday? As a teacher how do we protect, guide and support our young people in the light of such actions? The awfully clever DHT and I were out and about last week. We went up to Perth to be part of a national conversation with other colleagues from primary and secondary education. There were HTs and DHTs from several authorities and we were there to listen to speakers; including the Minister for Education talk about Social Justice. We chose to go because equity, equality, inclusion and just doing the best for our young people and their families, are at the heart of what we do in our school. As I often write; we are in the business of improving people. The Scottish Government has Social Justice running throughout their education programme we were interested to hear what was being said. To be honest it wasn’t anything new, but, as always talking with colleagues was interesting, reaffirming and challenging. We dissected, discussed and the DHT muttered as he does, on the journey home.
The message from everyone was we are doing our best for our learning community. The issues, challenges and successes were all very similar. There was a shared ethos in the challenges of budgets, training and hard-to-engage families. There were some tricks of the trade shared. The theme of helping our young people to use the opportunities we can source, to help enable them to be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens is alive and thriving in our schools. Talking to colleagues from across Scotland, sharing our progress with staff, and working together as we will next week in our in-service days renews our sense of purpose. These four capacities are at the heart of our Scottish education system and they are real and tangible. Against all this hard work, compassion and commitment we then have to think about what events such as the tragedy in Paris means to our communities. We are global citizens, we are part of this. For me it makes me square my shoulders and renew my focus, along with everyone in our learning community, to do our best for our young people and count our many blessings.

Pupil Leadership Team

The Pupil Leadership team of our Head Boy and Girl and Depute Head Boy and girl met with Mr McLaren and Mrs Wieczorek to discuss several items of interest about school. Eryn  is our minute taker. We had interesting discussions about the use of the playgrounds and how we set up assembly times. We are scheduled to meet again later this month. The Pupil Leadership Team and Eryn feed back to the wider pupil body about our discussions and bring any suggestions or queries to the table. They will be writing for our newsletters throughout the session too.

Promoting Citizenship

We all influence our young people. Here in school we lead and work by example and support our young people as they gain their skills and knowledge of themselves and the wider community. It has been brought to our attention that several adults visiting the school grounds at the start and end of the school day are using inappropriate language. May I please remind you that we do not expect our pupils to hear unacceptable language at anytime while in and around school. I appreciate your support in this matter. We would ask that everyone respect the standards we set in school for our young people and lead by example by not swearing in and around our school.

Similarly, may I ask those of you who bring dogs onto the school grounds while collecting, or dropping off children, to be courteous to others who might not be at ease with dogs. Also to be aware of any dog mess that may occur on school grounds and ensure its removal for health and safety reasons. Dogs should not be brought into our school grounds at any time.

Out of Doors

Can I ask that all our young people be sent to school with appropriate outdoor clothing. We all enjoy using our outdoor spaces at playtime and lunchtime but also throughout the day as classes take learning activities outside. We also take part in sporting events that are held outside at this time of year. This session we have all been inspired by The Daily Mile at St Ninians Primary School and here at our school every class is participating in the Clackmannan Kilometre either using the park or the muga as we run, jog and walk for 10 minutes or so each day if possible.