Smoke and Mirrors

<a href='’ >Bloom\'s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Another week closer to the realisation of the first phase of our Buildings Development Project.  The smell of freshly painted walls and the sweeping of dusty floors is creating an air of excitement and anticipation around the school.  Plans are now afoot for an official opening of the Music Room and practice suites and we hope to confirm a date with you within the next few days.

It has been a fairly exciting week at school, particularly on the sporting front.  So much so that I feel compelled to note it here for all to read.    Mr Spong and the U11 football teams had two very contrasting challenges last Friday and again on Tuesday.  Firstly with an 11-a-side match at Berkhamsted and then a 7-a-side game at Kingshott, our courageous children gave all they could and the A teams came away with a stunning 4-0 victory from Berkhamsted and a 2-1 win at Kingshott while the B teams fought hard and gained admirable 1-3 and results.   A great achievemnet and testament to great coaching and encouragement.

Also, thanks to great coaching and encouragement, our U10 A & B netball teams were very successful at the Heath Mount tournament last Saturday.  With Miss Owen and Mrs Sharp both teams were on great form.  Our B team only narrowly missed winning their part of the tournament but came a well-deserved 2nd place.  The A team were rampant and put away all opposition in their path on the way to gaining our first ever trophy at this tournament.

With all of these events, plus the many activities that the children are engaged in on a daily basis, we get to see the very best in all of them.  The work of Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences has been very influential in the teaching profession over the past 10 years or so and is finding greater resonance in more schools.  We find at St Joseph’s In The Park, without attaching a label or calling our approach one thing or another, we already do our very best to provide the learning opportunities that suit the many diverse learning styles that we know our pupils possess.  It is an intriguing and challenging path but one that leads to greater rewards in the success and future well-being of the children.

I alluded last week to the definition of success in adult life. Bear with me now this might be a little deep…We all recognise that this success can come in very many different guises: emotional, material, finanacial, etc..  Yet it is this first, an emotionally stable and lasting happiness and sense of well-being that is the most important.  “Schooling” aims to prepare children for the future through a formal academic curriculum and the application to an “input-output” model of attainment.  Yet “learning” is the process by which we all come to recognise our innate gifts and aptitudes; gain a sense of achievement; develop an “emotional intelligence” and compassion for others and understand that which makes us happy.  It is not sufficient only to define success through the outcome of a child’s schooling (exam grades, awards, university placement).  To marry this success with the opportunity  to learn, i.e. understand yourself, others and the world around you, is the challenge that we set set our selves as parents and teachers.  That, then will lead to greater success.

The Top 5 things I learned at the IAPS Conference this week:

1. It affirmed my conviction about St Joseph’s In The Park’s unique ethos.
   
2. Despite what it might claim on their websites, many schools struggle to truly understand the concept that “happy children learn”.  We don’t.
   
3. The collective noun for Head Teachers is “a procrastination”.
4. Some Hotels in London are a triumph of style over substance.
5. Rebecca Romero is “more legs than torso”.

Now, that last one is only because one of the speakers, Dan Hunt, headed the British Women’s Cycling Team at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  He was asked to speak at conference to describe his experiences in developing elite athletes.  It was very interesting to reflect on my role as a Head and our school as a whole in the light of this and the other presentations on, amongst others, Climbing Everest, founding Coffee Republic and the RSA and social mobility.  What I found from the 2 days at the start of this week was that our school is in a very strong place.  Not only with the level of cohesion and commitment in the community, but also the philosophical underpinning of the school.  So much is now being spouted in the press and learned journals about the need to develop a sense of well-being within children; that schools need to prepare their pupils for the workplaces of the future which will require compassion and resilience.  Well, St Joseph’s In The Park already achieves that and more.  Our children learn to be nice people; they understand and realise their character traits and develop an attitude to life and work and school that can only result in their eventual success in adult life, however that success in defined (that is a topic for another Friday Mailing).  It was a delight to return to school on Tuesday and know we have one of the best and most forward-thinking schools around.

Well, Autumn has arrived with a vengeance. Rain today and an uncertain weekend. What next could our variable climate offer us, you may ask? Well maybe we should take this opportunity to give advanced warning of our preparations for snow at school! So remember, if it snows don’t make any unnecessary journeys. Great, now I won’t have to remind you again, will I?

In thinking about what to write this week, I was struck by the thought that, for me, school is about vignettes, the little things – often too numerous to remember let alone recall – that occur during the week, adding up to an overall impression of the status quo; the micro-interactions between people that happen in moments that could make you laugh or shout for joy, cause upset or even engender wrath. I wish I could stop and write them down because I know they would be worthy of publishing in a book (just read Gervase Phinn). Here, for example, are a very few things from this week…

• There was my lesson in the meteorology of tornadoes from Flynn and Phillip who took great pains to articulate their detailed knowledge and tried to convince me that the population of America had been wiped out – well nearly!
• Then there was the delivery, to Mrs Elson (who seems to have got a reputation amongst the children), of a squashed frog – in a plastic bag, I hasten to add!
• James, who had taken it upon himself, configured all our netbook computers so that they connected to the wireless network and then proceed to discover the “hotspots” around the school. Apparently the strongest signal is outside Infant 1.
• The proud parents bearing swimming certificates, other awards and this week even a golf bag – taller than its winner – waiting in Karen & Liz’s office for Friday Assembly.
• The J4 prefects, stepping in when Bill was ill at the start of the week, to put out dining tables and benches ready for lunch.
• Georgia and Felix’s grandfather (who visited J3 this week to talk about Judaism) telling me, in front of a prospective parent I was taking on a tour, that he rarely had experienced such bright and inquisitive children. Or the German mother, touring the school later in the week, arriving with me in J4 to be met by Lilian and Mr Cadwallader…both German speakers.
• The younger siblings – not quite of school age, but just wise enough to guess at what possibilities school holds for their older brother or sister – who either want to help with snack boxes and water bottles or simply don’t want to be dragged out of the classroom.

These, and many more, make up an average week at school. I spoke, a very long time ago now it seems, about trying to lift the lid on the “black box” that is a school. It are these “moments”, then, that point to one of the key components within the box. There is much that we, as staff, provide the children with regard to effective learning opportunities. However, at the heart of the matter is the strength of the relationships – the interactions, big or small – between staff and parents and staff and children, that provide the foundation for our success. As long as the relationships work, we are providing ourselves, as a community, with stability and security for the future.

I will be away from school at the IAPS conference in Westminster. The theme is about “passion for success”. I look forward to being able to feedback to you next week, although I already know that, at St Joseph’s In The Park, our passion for the school gives us a head start. If you do need to get in touch with me, please contact Karen Sheffield at school and she will pass on any messages.

And having mentioned passion…Orient are in dire need of 3 points tonight against Brentford! Fingers crossed.

All the very best for the weekend.

Neil Jones

Headmaster

www.twitter.com/fromthepark

Since I write my great thoughts every week in the school’s Friday Mailing, I have now come to the logical conclusion that I will plagiarise myself! Therefore I hope this will drive my writing for both audiences here and on the school’s website for our community.

Conclusions – Next Generation Learning

The unfeasibly glamorous Educational Psychologist, Tanya Byron, has published the above report, “Oh, Nothing Much”, to delve into that Black Box that we know as school.  In what may be a bid to turn us all into Helicopter Parents, she is suggesting that they way to find out what is occuring at your child school is to engage in a more open dialogue.  As Professor Byron concludes:

In summary – a successful learner is a happy learner; a happy learner is one that feels capable and also supported and understood when necessary. For children this is best affected by calm, empowering and supportive communications between all those involved in their education and care, and a relaxed, warm and positive family setting where all the successes and disappointments of the day can be shared enthusiastically.

Well, fine.  But this cuts across one significant aspect of what Home-School communications ought to embody and that’s trust in teachers.  It is very important to engage in “supportive communication” with your child & their teacher/school.  But as a parent we have a responsibility to support the process of learning that is set in motion through the school environment. 

I am not certain that all parents could share disappointments “enthusiastically”.  Rather, I’d be inclined to feel that a child’s disappointments may be taken to heart and be turned into ammunition with which to criticise a well-meaning teacher who merely happens to be utilising sound classroom management techniques.  Alternatively, parents may fail to realise that disappointment and dealing with the fall-out is an element of learning to be a properly funtioning member of society.

I’m all for opening dialogue with parents; lifting the lid on the Black Box.  But please do not let the tail wag the dog.  Someone is the educational expert here, put some trust in them.  Let parents be parents and love their children and if that means taking “nothing” to mean “I did OK today, but nothing of significance happened today that I could either be blamed or praised for so I don’t really need to share it beacuse I’ve been busy for the last 7 hours, actually”, then accept it.

Goodness!  Has it been that long!  Well, I suppose, as I was told when I started blogging: You need an audience.  Now I have one, in the from of my school community and we haven’t looked back.  It has become very fullfilling to have a fantastic CMS driving our web-presence.  I have now set my sights on using the process of publishing on that site to reflect on how to develop communications from within my community.

For now, let me just share this.

Out of school from The Headmaster on Vimeo.

I was honoured, yesterday, to present the awards and give a speech at my old school’s (The Campion School, Hornchurch) Junior Credits ceremony.  The event, not the whole school Prize Giving as it was “in my day”, celebrates a wider range of achievement for boys in years 7, 8 & 9.  School invites a Former Pupil back to do the job and, as they got wind of me now being a headmaster, I got the nod this year!  However, I am in very august company, with far better known FPs such as John Briffa, Kevin Sorrell and Tony Diprose being past guests.

I had not expected to be in such position – to attempt to say something witty and wise to a hall full of boys & their parents – so soon.  So what to say?  Well I got off to a risky start when I told the audience that my old house was Garnet.  Immediately alienating myself from 4/5ths of them!  I recovered with a more serious reflection on the simple, unifying factor of all Campion Boys (and girls, now there are 60+ in the 6th form) and that is their quality as decent men ( and women).  “A firm hand shake an good eye contact will take you far”.  For a couple of hundred teenage boys to come up on stage and do just that (with just a few exceptions and “cheers, mate” will be addressed by Mr. Luck!), was exceptional testament to the standards set by the school and adhered to by the men.

Continuing the risky route I then pointed out the importance of balance between work and play and that the school provides so many opportunities to develop personally – music, arts, literature, sport.  I pointed out that a man who can dance, cook, know poetry or play a musical instrument would be more popular with the fairer sex!  A positive reaction – to say the least!

I then took the plunge and gave them my advice as a primary school teacher and invoked Robert Fulgham’s “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten.”  Partly to deliver some humour, but also to demonstrate the importance of the simple things in life, it certainly provoked a good response.  Especially when I told them how important it was to flush the toilet & wash hands before you eat!

A great day, made more so, when i discovered that the Headmaster, John Johnson – himself a Former Pupil – was a Leyton Orient season ticket holder.

After the impressive performance of the BBC’s online services through the Olympics, they continue to impress with more & more content of interest. I guess we must expect nothing less for our licence fee! In fact, this amounts to a subscription to their website…hmm…best get the most out of it then.

Unfortuneately, I don’t necessarily have the time to delve very far into micro-sites such as this one on the Human Mind & Psychology Tests. However, there is much that can be gained from this site for our INSET sessions!