Four days level pedalling and we’ve clocked up 80 miles, an occasional ice cream, cakes from the seventeenth best cake shop in the country, and some Rick Stein fish and chips. Yes they were as good as it gets. Though staggeringly, Julian, our superb grounds man, ate his cold and still claimed they were delicious!
So that’s the Plym Valley, the Tarka Trail, the Camel Trail and the Granite Way. They are all fairly level, easy rides and lots of fun to do. There was only one broken bicycle and no accidents this year. We’ve had a great group of students whose only mildly annoying habit has been the mini bus chorus of: ‘Are we there yet?’ At least it shows they were keen!
One of Andy Hamlyn and Heather Stimson’s many legacies is the annual Enrichment Week Cycle Camp down in Princetown. Devised and run by them for many years it continues to thrive with Don Phipps at the helm and I’m sure it will go on for as long as cycling is popular. It’s a wonderful activity for keen off-road cyclists over the varied and spectacular moor, down to the bunk house at the Plume and Feathers.
Now there is another cycling activity that deserves annual billing: Level Peddling. That Andy and Heather have put this together and run it during their final week in post is another example of the professionalism that makes teachers so respected by the public.
We said our farewells to them last week with a power point of photos in assembly that featured Andy as never before seen at South Dartmoor in his entire 37 years- yes, beardless! Did anyone recognise him? Heather was a schoolgirl at Ashburton, displaying her prowess as a hurdler- though I’m told not in a team!
One of my many memories is the first time I met each of them. Andy was a scary figure at the Governors’ and staff tea party during my interview back in 1989. ‘Lovely school,’ I enthused politely, aware that I needed to make a good impression. ‘Do you think so?’ he enquired scathingly, before filling me in on all the changes that were needed. It was just the information I needed for the interview the next day!
Heather marched in to my office, a local parent at that time, after I had been in post only three weeks to tell me I was taking the school in the wrong direction and she was considering sending her child to a different school! Once a member of staff, she repeated the warnings every time it was felt I had got things wrong. So you can see how indebted I am to them both.
They have been at the sharp end of work in the school, dealing directly with all the problems thrown up by students and parents in a period of social upheaval and changing standards. They are supreme professionals, true friends of South Dartmoor, colleagues who have shaped the destiny of the school and the lives of thousands of youngsters.
Tough times, but they have been enormous fun to work with. At last, in retirement, for each of them it now really will be level peddling.
Friday, 18 July 2008
Thursday, 10 July 2008
We wouldn't do it like this!
On a shelf in my Office there are two neat rows of red box files that I haven’t used for over five years since I began doing everything electronically. Yet they were part of a major refurbishment to mark new styles of working. How the world moves on.
I realised how much when I started reading a newly published book called We did it Here! on the train to London last week. Confession time- I’m not a great reader of educational books: I leave that to the guru, Martin Burt. But I’d been asked to write a review of this one for the National College.
I began We did it Here! anticipating some inspirational new thinking but it’s as dated as the material in my red boxes. The opening study features work done at Settle High School back in the dark ages of the millennium. Whilst the DCSF has moved us on to consider community cohesion, this account describes community activities we all would recognise - a special activity day with photos and children’s (hand)writing copied as evidence. Deep Learning days are streets ahead.
There are quotes from OFSTED 2003 dotted about for no apparent purpose. There’s plenty of practical advice: ‘The newsletter was printed on the school’s risograph machine for about ten pence per unit’. And another innovation: ‘a different colour paper was chosen for each issue.’ Unbelievable!
A chapter on e-learning moves the OFSTED quotes on to 2005 but a turgid management plan from 1999 is quoted over several pages. Do we need to know that the servers at QES in Kirby Lonsdale were upgraded in 2002 and the strain on the technicians was evident by 2004? What about the strain on the reader?
These are not just tired old case studies: they’re full blown documentary dramas with all the tedium of the Big Brother House. The clichéd adjectives reminded me of a Mills and Boon novel: ‘Roger’s … eyes lit up at particular moments as he remembered key milestones along the way.’ Show me a milestone that’s not key or along the way. In a chapter on a Cheshire High School, we suffer two pages of reflections on the arrival of spring, the author’s exhaustion and the Manchester traffic on the M62 when: ‘the sun was shining and spring was breathing fresh life into the moors.’ By then I realised I was being unkind - to Mills and Boon.
The theory section takes us into ‘domains’ (posh word for factors) of successful schools. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll guess leadership is tops. But: “Head teachers are not always able to take the lead.’ That’s just an excuse for a neat diagram in which circles of ‘drivers’ push each other around a bigger circle like dodgems at the fair. The head teacher though is ‘lead driver.’ I should think so too.
The book concludes with the author’s manifesto, more pleasing platitudes. We’re called to swear allegiance to ‘creating happy, resourceful and well-educated students.’ If only I’d thought of that years ago. In fact, the DCSF is about to legislate on the school’s role in ‘promoting well being.’
There are numerous excellent, tightly written case studies on the NCSL and SSAT websites. They cover the latest innovative work on curriculum development. The illustrative material reflects the digital age. Everything can be accessed electronically. So this journey in the Tardis reminded me that those red boxes on my shelf do have a purpose after all. You’ll find We Did It Here! filed away in one of them.
I realised how much when I started reading a newly published book called We did it Here! on the train to London last week. Confession time- I’m not a great reader of educational books: I leave that to the guru, Martin Burt. But I’d been asked to write a review of this one for the National College.
I began We did it Here! anticipating some inspirational new thinking but it’s as dated as the material in my red boxes. The opening study features work done at Settle High School back in the dark ages of the millennium. Whilst the DCSF has moved us on to consider community cohesion, this account describes community activities we all would recognise - a special activity day with photos and children’s (hand)writing copied as evidence. Deep Learning days are streets ahead.
There are quotes from OFSTED 2003 dotted about for no apparent purpose. There’s plenty of practical advice: ‘The newsletter was printed on the school’s risograph machine for about ten pence per unit’. And another innovation: ‘a different colour paper was chosen for each issue.’ Unbelievable!
A chapter on e-learning moves the OFSTED quotes on to 2005 but a turgid management plan from 1999 is quoted over several pages. Do we need to know that the servers at QES in Kirby Lonsdale were upgraded in 2002 and the strain on the technicians was evident by 2004? What about the strain on the reader?
These are not just tired old case studies: they’re full blown documentary dramas with all the tedium of the Big Brother House. The clichéd adjectives reminded me of a Mills and Boon novel: ‘Roger’s … eyes lit up at particular moments as he remembered key milestones along the way.’ Show me a milestone that’s not key or along the way. In a chapter on a Cheshire High School, we suffer two pages of reflections on the arrival of spring, the author’s exhaustion and the Manchester traffic on the M62 when: ‘the sun was shining and spring was breathing fresh life into the moors.’ By then I realised I was being unkind - to Mills and Boon.
The theory section takes us into ‘domains’ (posh word for factors) of successful schools. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll guess leadership is tops. But: “Head teachers are not always able to take the lead.’ That’s just an excuse for a neat diagram in which circles of ‘drivers’ push each other around a bigger circle like dodgems at the fair. The head teacher though is ‘lead driver.’ I should think so too.
The book concludes with the author’s manifesto, more pleasing platitudes. We’re called to swear allegiance to ‘creating happy, resourceful and well-educated students.’ If only I’d thought of that years ago. In fact, the DCSF is about to legislate on the school’s role in ‘promoting well being.’
There are numerous excellent, tightly written case studies on the NCSL and SSAT websites. They cover the latest innovative work on curriculum development. The illustrative material reflects the digital age. Everything can be accessed electronically. So this journey in the Tardis reminded me that those red boxes on my shelf do have a purpose after all. You’ll find We Did It Here! filed away in one of them.
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