Down in the Deeps

There’s a superb international flavour to the home page this week with the much anticipated arrival of our delightful Thai colleagues and the extraordinary diary of her Namibia trip from Jane Thomas. After spending the second week of the ‘holiday’ writing a project design for the British Council, it seemed really fitting for South Dartmoor to go international.

I learned that we’re not the first ‘blog-standard’ comprehensive after all. Another local school may have beaten us to the title because they use blogs as a regular form of communication between staff- for lesson ideas, records of meetings, and even photos and videos. These are the real thing and not the alternative story of daily life that I like to portray. But ‘real time’ reporting of another kind is being developed by the Government and we are now one of three pilot schools in the south west.

Meanwhile the video technology continues to offer us new ways to our job effectively. A broken fire alarm early in the week brought an instant confession as the culprit realised that all would be revealed by the cameras. Students saw an example of group bullying in assembly today- a screen shot of an outdoor area. One student was threatening another. But the assembled crowd of on-lookers were also bullies. All the research shows that if bullies are confronted by their peers, then they stop. This group, by their very presence, were inciting the bully when they could have taken the civilised step of walking away and reporting what was going on.

It’s a relief to be back to a day of ‘shallow’ learning after the going through the deeps yesterday. The staff reported back in our morning briefing on the vast range of activities that took place from Thai and Dreams and Teams-led sports in Year 7 to The Apprentice-style outdoor challenges from Phil Atherton’s vivid imagination with Year 9. This year group amazingly, now all have ‘heart start’ certificates, thanks to the hard work and organisation of Richard Woodland and his team. We’ve already had offers to be on standby in case of collapse. So who wants to volunteer to give Mr Hamlyn the kiss of life?

For Year 8, The Deeps offered visitors to Religious Studies and Modern Languages. Students were engrossed in the personal stories of members of religious groups who had fascinating stories of faith to tell. They polished up their French in the afternoon and were busy in role when I went round the department. In Science Year 10 were experimenting with everything that could move, explode make a smell or create a surprise. What must Mark Gale’s living room look like! Balloons attached to CDs floated across the desks at one point and demonstrated the principles of the hovercraft. And Year 11 had a terrific day in English- working at the very depths to secure those top grades in only a few weeks time. Keep up the pressure, English Department.

I attended a dinner that evening with some other invited heads from the region hosted by the Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or dinner and our role was to brief him on some of the educational issues facing schools and their leaders at the moment. By midnight we had solved most of the world’s problems. But things looked different in the morning. Deep or shallow, the success of everything we do is rooted in how and what we learn.