On Christmas Day in 1940, a 21 year old Private stood alone for seven hours in the pouring rain on the seafront of Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. He guarded a barrage of artillery pieces which pointed out into the grey channel towards an unseen enemy which had, only months earlier, driven the British […]
I’d been ill since the first day back in January. It started with a raging fever during the INSET day. Like all teachers, I took no notice, although my AHT mentioned that I looked ‘unusual’. Then came the cough – for six weeks. I went to the doctor – three times, which (as a typical […]
The playground was eerily quiet. The parents collecting their children stood in shocked silence. We’d seen it on the TV, in other places, first far away. Then closer, as the storm blew in from the east. But when it arrived it caught us all off guard. As a staff we had begun planning for a […]
The reception children jigged to ‘Mr Bluesky’ booming out on the school PA, waving to friends that they’d not seen in months. One slipped the grip of her mother’s hand and ran over and (before I could stop her at a safe 2m) gave me a hug. But the parents stood in complete silence. To […]
When I first wrote about the gathering storm two months ago, the very idea of sheltering in our homes for weeks on end seemed like a far-fetched dream. But we were different people then. People who idly bustled with crowds at shops and joked about the sudden lack of toilet paper. And so we entered […]
This will be a summer term that we will never forget. Two years ago I wrote a blog on leading in the ultra-busy Terms 5-6. It mused on the all the stuff which traditionally fills our summer terms and feels very important. Until it suddenly isn’t. Because this summer term is not like any other […]
They say a week is a long time in politics. Now it is a long time for all of us, with the crisis unfolding around us at a head-spinning pace. So what do we as school leaders do now? Well, as last week (I know – it was only last week when I wrote a now […]
There are some weeks in school leadership where, by Friday, Monday feels like a different age. This last week (finishing aptly on Friday 13th March 2020) has been one of them. We have all gradually noticed the gathering storm. First the far off rumbles of thunder in countries far away. Then the louder claps as the […]
“That’ll never happen! How could it? Surely those things don’t happen in real life!” Like many Headteachers, as part of my National Professional Qualification for Headteachering (NPQH), I had to complete a critical incident task. Much like Star Trek’s impossible ‘The Kobayashi Maru’ training task, this is a series of hypothetical things that happen simultaneously […]
“Accelerated Learning!” I left a dramatic pause to anticipate the excited rapture of my colleagues. They looked at me blankly. Some did their best to look interested. Others sighed. I had been a Deputy Headteacher at the Junior School in a sleepy market town for less than a month and it was my mission to […]
