Message from the headteacher

Someone was very rude about the mullet I was sporting in last week’s newsletter. For a while I was thinking of sulking and not doing a newsletter bit this week, but then I received an encouraging email from Arthur’s mum which restored my faith in humanity. I have therefore decided to grace you with a further newsletter bit (which almost no one will read).

I remember that as a 15-year-old sporting a mullet, romantic love was always a tricky landscape to negotiate (come to that, it’s not turned out to be that much more straightforward as a 52-year-old with a…well…a totally nondescript hairstyle). Grief, they say, is the price of love and even as a teen I remember coming a cropper at the hands of this one or that. Of course, I didn’t have Miss Hughes and Miss Green in charge of my year group when I was at school. On Monday this impressive pair laid on an event for eligible Y7s which was a celebration of love in all its forms (well, most of them). Y7s were invited to share their love for a friend or secret love or girlfriend/boyfriend with a card and at the end of the day they watched a romcom together, enjoyed some popcorn and posed for photos wearing silly hats and the like. The event was warm and celebratory and kind and loving. Towards the end of the evening some members of the senior team diverted from their late meeting and insisted that I take a photo of them in the booth. So here they are. Yes. They are the people responsible for the education of 1,248 Highfields students.

As usual I’ve been in and out of lessons to check on student conduct and sample the curriculum. One lesson I really enjoyed this week featured a PE teacher who focused on the WHY. Rather than assuming that students would follow his instructions slavishly, he went out of his way to explain the reasons for his requests. For example, he explained that he wanted no students sitting on benches initially because it meant that everyone started on the same level. Students are intelligent and it’s crucial that when we ask them to comply with a rule or to learn something, that we should also explain why they should want to do that.

This was one of the year 8 lessons I visited this week including those visits undertaken with Lisa Walton who is the deputy CEO of EMET. One of the benefits of belonging to a trust is that you can call in colleagues for a second opinion. Last week it was the English department that invited this collaboration from their EMET subject lead. This week it was my work in leading on behaviour, bullying and culture on Starkholmes site which was up for discussion and input. Thoroughly useful it was too.

Anyway. Time to take a short break. I hope that you manage to enjoy some quality time over the half term.

We are Highfields.

A Marsh Headteacher