Saturday!

I love Saturday morning! Long lie and no rushing around to get to school. But for the past few weekends I’ve been a bit swamped after that long lie with catching up with work. I need to remind myself every so often that I do need to take a break! I love my job, the danger for me is it becomes obsessional, but I know that’s not healthy! So when I spotted it was 7.00pm and I’d not stopped all day, I gave myself a wee prod. I know the quality of what I’m doing goes when I don’t rest properly!

Don Ledingham has been talking about finding time for Head Teacher things. I’m really encouraged by the focus he is putting on taking time to watch teaching and learning occur. If we lose sight of that as Heads, we lose sight of our purpose.

Tomorrow means getting out into the world! I know the report cards need signed but that can wait till Sunday evening! Well, I will get out into the world, if I can convince my sons to give a hand with the ironing mountain….

The interim reports landed on my desk on Friday. I have been thinking about what we can do to make reporting more valuable. I’m really not convinced that what we give to parents is best value. The amount of blood sweat and tears teachers excrete whilst writing the reports never quite seems reflected in the final product.  It seems what we write is much less valuable than the limited parent consultation times we allocate. We’ve been introducing weekly tea with teacher times. This now happens in P1 and 2. The nursery hope to start soon too. We’re adding in monthly P3-7 family time. It seems that this is much more useful for parents. They can talk about the curriculum, learning and teaching approaches and really get an overview of what is happening with their child in school. I wonder how we can use this to help us review how we report to parents. Does reporting really mean we have to hand out a “report card” or can we make it a much more meaningful experience for all concerned? Suggestions would be gratefully recieved!