At Tardebigge CE First School our vision is ‘human potential is without limit if we are motivated and engaged’. We aim to achieve this by providing the whole school community with ‘a rainbow of opportunity’. We are often referred to by our families as ‘the rainbow school.’ We have rainbows all around our school as a symbol of hope and to remind the children that with a growth mindset, you can do anything. As a Church of England school, we believe that children should experience life in all its fullness (John 10:10) hence providing ‘a rainbow of opportunity.’ On Friday 20th March, the last school day before lockdown due to the Covid 19 crisis, our staff were busy teaching children whilst also preparing packs of work to hand out for home learning for the weeks ahead. In school, we discussed with the children the story of Noah’s ark and the rainbow being the symbol of hope. The children all created their own rainbows in class. We had several children and families that were self-isolating at home, and we shared our rainbows with them. We set these children a task to also make and create their own rainbows to be displayed at their homes, which they shared with us all later. On Monday 23rd March, the school re-opened to start the task of looking after the children of critical keyworkers. Whilst many parents endeavored to keep their children safe at home, some required school to look after their children. Therefore, the school was open in a different capacity; to provide care and stability during the working day for these children. In what was normally the Easter holidays, we gave the children a choice of fun activities, one of which was the option to paint a giant rainbow at the front of the school. We wanted to do a little something to show our enormous gratitude not only to our hero NHS workers but also everyone else who is keeping the country running at this difficult time.
With footpaths alongside our school grounds used by walkers doing their daily exercise, we hope our rainbow also gave them hope and strength with its colour and vibrancy. As we only had a few children in school that day, the rainbow took most of the day to complete. There was a real sense of pride, awe and wonder when it was finished. When picking their children up, the parents, many of whom are doctors and nurses, were extremely impressed and happy. We did have to apologise at the end of the day for some slightly colourful children. We certainly made good use of spare school uniform as we washed lots of paint off clothes. Thankfully, the sun was shining, and the clothes were returned clean and dry! We shared the finished picture of the rainbow with all the other children across the school using our class distance learning portal and had many positive comments over the following days. It reminded children how much they missed being at school and our wonderful view. Our children now believe our Tardebigge school rainbow is bringing hope all over the country right now! We look forward to returning to school soon and seeing all our children in class again. Seeing them through a computer screen on our learning portal is lovely but not quite the same.
Tardebigge School Completely Bromsgrove
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