Showing posts with label Tonight Matthew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tonight Matthew. Show all posts

Thursday 7 January 2021

Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be... A Delivery Guy

I've contemplated writing this blog post multiple times over the last 9 months. The benefit of putting it off until now is that I can pretty much say I've been Delivery Guy in all 4 seasons, such has been the length of this horrible pandemic.

Today I was delivering laptops, but it hasn't always been devices for children who are struggling to access the online portion of our remote learning offer. I've lost count of the number of free school meals I've delivered, whether that was en masse during lockdown (pre-vouchers), or on a more individualised level for those self-isolating throughout the last term. Before that it was printed packs of learning resources when we realised that many of our families weren't able to access our online offer.

But it is never just the delivery. It's the logistics behind it too. 

Way back at the beginning of the year I sent out an online survey to parents asking them about their access to online devices (and also about their need for key worker provision in case of another lockdown). Of course, the online survey didn't fare too well for those who struggle with getting connected so there were plenty of paper copies flying around my kitchen table this week too. 

Once I'd imported (exported?) the Microsoft Forms data into an Excel document and filtered various ways to find out which families needed laptops, and once I'd added in the requests from other families, I had to check that against our list of Pupil Premium children. As I expected, the lists didn't match up - from my survey I could say that many of our PP children already had sufficient access to device, but that other children, for various reasons, did need laptops.

After some ranting and raving about the red tape involved in the government-provided laptops only being available to PP children, my principal helpfully pointed me towards our E-Learning Systems and Media Specialist who this time was doling out our class sets of Chromebooks to aid with remote learning. I sent him my numbers over and by lunchtime I had a stack of laptops checked and ready to go.

Maybe this is my perfectionism kicking in (or lack of smartphone) but I had to create myself some sort of delivery route to make the best use of my time - one Google Maps session later, I had put the local knowledge that I didn't have a year ago to work and had a great journey plan ready. That done I was ready to head off to school to pick up the laptops.

Once there, with requests for laptops continuing to come in left, right and centre, I filled in the serial numbers of the machines on all the necessary paperwork, wrote down usernames and passwords, and Post-It noted each laptop to ensure that I was giving the right one to the right family. With all that done I was ready to leave.

Suffice it to say, there were some very pleased and thankful parents and children this afternoon. The cold weather was infinitely better to work in than the sweltering temperatures of the summer (my normal work wear was not conducive to getting in and out of a car hoying around bags of bread and fruit and the like). After the disappointment of not being able to give government-provided laptops to the children who really needed them, it felt good to be making a step towards getting more children educated during this latest lockdown. Even de-tangling the snaking mass of chargers in the footwell at each stop couldn't break my good mood.

And tomorrow morning I'll go back out to spread more joy, like some kind of out-of-season Santa Claus.

Thursday 1 October 2020

Tonight Matthew, I'm Going To Be... A Director

This COVID has certainly put a spanner in a few works; one such spanner being year 6 open evenings at secondary schools. 

A parent of a year 6 child myself, this is a huge concern for me - how do we pick the right school for her, especially given that this is the first time we are sending a child off to big school? With my responsibilities across both KS2 and KS3 I wanted to help to make sure that what our school offers to prospective children and parents would help them to understand better what our school is like.

So, on top of the content that was already being produced for online viewing (virtual tour, promo video, message from the principal etc), I decided to give both year 6 and new year 7s a voice - after all, they're the ones its all about. It's all very well having members of staff present information, but children want to hear from their peers too - they're the ones who will tell them what it's really like.

And that's why this morning I was directing, alongside our tech-savvy media guy, an extra bit of video content where year 6 children got the chance to ask year 7 children some of their own questions. With bubbles we couldn't get them in the room together so we had to film the year 6s asking their questions first and then the year 7s answering the questions (with me asking the questions this time). Hopefully once it's all edited together we will have a seamless FAQ video for children and their parents to watch in order to get a more rounded picture of what's on offer.

The year 7 children presented confidently, embodying our values and showing that in just a few short weeks they have really settled in well and got to know the ropes. They were able to articulate positively much about their experience so far -  a testament to the hard work of the team of staff leading and teaching in year 7. And all this in spite of all the difficulties surrounding transition and the return to school that COVID has presented us with.

Teachers and leaders play many roles under normal circumstances - the positive view of COVID is that it is most certainly providing us with further strings to our bows!

Monday 28 September 2020

Tonight Matthew, I'm Going To Be... A Gallerist

It's a fairly well accepted concept that a teacher is so many more things than a teacher - that a teacher puts on many different hats even during the course of one day. I think the same is true for school leaders too.

For a part of today I found myself acting as a gallerist, or a curator.

We have, as many primary schools probably do, many, many display boards around school. Too many, perhaps. And what happens to display boards when teaching staff are getting on with teaching and doing the important stuff? The content sometimes gets a bit old. That or teachers have to spend time out of class, or out of hours, putting up displays - something that, in my opinion, really should be minimised if we care about our children and staff at all.

So there I was double-sided taping the large art prints I'd order to black paper, gluing the accompanying information I'd collated and trimming it as perfectly as I possibly could. I was in 'the studio' overlooking 'the heartspace' off which many of our classrooms are situated. I could see and hear school going on all around me - I noticed this because I suppose I was desperate to legitimise the time spent gluing and cutting and stapling. I could almost feel the calm, purposefulness of what was going on through each of those doorways and in all honesty I wondered if what I was doing was worthwhile.

Afterall, I'm a deputy head - shouldn't I be doing something else? Did these Eric Ravilious, Georgia O'Keefe and Jacob Lawrence prints really need backing and putting up by me? Yes, I told myself, they did - because this is one of the many problems of being a perfectionist: you learn very quickly that there are some things you just have to do yourself. And yes, because for all intents and purposes, I am the art lead in the school and it is my job to educate staff and children in matters relating to the arts. 

And actually, yes, because I have to balance out some of the other less desirable things I have to do with things that are actually enjoyable - this for my own mental wellbeing. Besides, what was I actually thinking about all that time? Well, many confidential things that can't be repeated on my blog: I was providing myself with time and space to think through the issues of the day - the things that were on my mind over the weekend, the difficult conversations that need to be had, the logistical problems that need working through. 

On the outside I was cutting and sticking, on the inside I was doing what I'm really paid to do: lead.

If I were to go from one high pressure situation to another, never allowing myself down time doing jobs that seem a little more menial, would I really be properly ready for the next meeting, the next time someone brings a problem to me or the next time I have to deal with a behaviour issue? I think not.

So, some thinking got done - hopefully preparing me for the future - and some nice (I think) displays were created in the process.

Yeah, I'm OK with being a gallerist.