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alt="Jeremy Summerell Schools Bulletin Assistant Director’s Jottings 25th March 2009 Issue 40 The Schools Bulletin is published fortnightly in term. We are pleased to publish news and notices. Please send details and pictures (.jpeg) and we will try to include them. Send to: debbie.jordan@ely.anglican.org Inside this issue: Assistant Director’s Jottings 1 The Schools Team Core Skills Training Coming your way next term! From the National Society Inter Faith Week 2 Global School Partnership From our Schools World Book Day Reddy for action For Governors Newly appointed Foundation Governors 3 The Back Page Hellos and Goodbyes In our Prayers this Month Vacancies Dates for the Diary SIAS Reports 4 Diocese of Ely Church Schools Bulletin 25th March 2009 Issue 40 # When I last had the privilege of sharing my thoughts with you all I wrote about journeys and bored you with my “holiday snaps” from my recent trip to Nicaragua. This school term I haven’t journeyed to anywhere as far away but I have covered hundreds of miles travelling around the diocese in my role as assistant director visiting schools, headteachers and governing bodies, as well as attending meetings with local authority officers and going on the odd course. I love the variety and the fact that every day is different in much the same way that I enjoyed all the challenges that headship threw up but my best days are still those when I have been in schools meeting children and staff. I’m always asked to take pictures of the good practice that I see so that we can put them on one of our websites or books (do look at our website www.ely.anglican.org/schools and the CASIAS website www.casias.org for valuable resources and if you haven’t tried any of the assemblies from the Ely 900 book then you’re in for a treat!) Sadly though, all too often, I return to the office with no pictures in my camera not because I’ve forgotten to put it in my bag but because you can’t really take photographs of conversations and those special moments which are fleeting but live with you for a long time. When I first started this new job I thought I would listen to mind expanding Radio 4 documentaries or uplifting music as I journeyed between appointments, but instead I have found myself replaying in my head all the things that people, particularly children, have said to me and all the things that I have seen which cannot be photographed in the normal sense of the word but are photographed into memories. In just two terms I have a bulging photo album of memories and I should like to thank so many of you for welcoming me into your school families and sharing so many good things with me. Much of my work involves listening and part of my brief as one of the Team’s Assistant Directors is to co-ordinate a new service which we have named “The Schools Well Being Project”. This sets out to offer colleagues a “Listening Ear” which is different to anything that is currently provided by SIPs or inspectors – LA, Ofsted or SIAS. This is holistic in its approach and seeks to care for people, especially the Headteacher, as well securing the best possible outcomes for schools in a supportive and non-threatening way. I piloted the project with a small number of schools during the Autumn and Spring terms and received positive feedback. A small group made up of some serving headteachers and recently retired professionals is, as I write, preparing itself to offer the service across the Diocese to those schools who wish to be involved during the coming months. Headteachers should look out for an email in the next week which sets out all the detail and how to accept or decline the offer. To return to the journey theme. Our journey through Lent is coming to an end and we are getting closer to our next destination, Easter, when we can stop again for a while before setting out on the next journey – SATs, reports, residentials, planning another academic year …… All of us in the schools team send you our best wishes for a blessed Easter and pray that you will find some time for yourself. I recently found these words of St Augustine and they have been both a challenge and a comfort to me in my new role as I travel around visiting schools. “People go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.” I hope you may find them useful too! Jeremy The cross on the right has been recently commissioned for Barton VA School. It will serve as a reminder to all who visit the school that the Christian community gathers around Christ’s cross and, to quote some words from our communion service, ‘The tree of shame was made the tree of glory; and where life was lost, there life has been restored. ‘ Just as there would be no point to Easter without the resurrection, so , to quote a recent Cambridge theologian, ’If you leave Calvary behind, you arrive not in Paradise, but fairyland’! All the members of the Schools Team therefore wish you a reflective Holy Week and a "
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