Malawi & More

  My Saturday began with the beauty that is Rosie Wagner, reaching out across the planet and making me smile, laugh and miss her. And in fact we had a good catch up yesterday too. Then a morning in the garden, I've got more healthy tomato seedlings than I was quite sure what to do with but once I'd harvested some leeks all was well. In my bid to have more friends that do not teach at my school we had a couple over for dinner. They are lovely but sadly not likely to stay longer than this year.  Work has been its usual mix of fun lessons, interesting and not so interesting meetings and a few difficult chats thrown in for good measure.  My highlight was on Tuesday when we got off site for the 3rd day (and final) of the senior leadership training that Sarah and I have written and planned together. I was quite nervous about it as I'd used materials from my old NPQSL from about 10 years ago. But nothing much changes in truth and the extra stuff I've added from my own ways of ...

BigA had a busy weekend, climbed a small mountain, rescued our new neighbours when they got a flat tyre and frisbee. I did one of those things. Can you guess which one?  The working week was, as always, busy. The PTA AGM, not the highlight. But I've been making sure I leave school at a sensible time and have managed frisbee and badminton. And made some time to talk to pals back home too which was great. Some of them are going through horrible stuff so I'm, once again, grateful for the power of the internet.  I've had some great T&L conversations with one of the new teachers, who is like R, but a man and not as good, because no one could be, but lovely to have someone who can talk for hours about the love of the job.  I've also had a couple of slightly harder chats, one 'you didn't get the job' one 'could you have handled that differently?' one slightly nicer one 'we value you' - which made them cry. Apparently the first time in many many ...

  Following on from a very good party on the Friday I had a bit of a non day on Saturday, but the poker game at the end of the day was good fun, despite my shockingly bad playing. On Sunday, there was a planned power outage and I got up grateful that the sun was shining and that we have a gas hob ready to make myself a cup of tea. My course starts in October so I figure I should enjoy the sense of no rush or of really having anything urgent to do. A small bird of prey was calling as I got the water in, watered the seedlings and listened to More or Less on a podcast, my family sleeping soundly while I began to decide where I was going to put the currently thriving basil plants.  The working week has not been quite so relaxing, the short terms mean each week is always full on. I had to be very firm with some staff, who despite the training less than a week ago let a total stranger wander around on his phone. I had to be even more firm with my HPQH provider because I had the thir...

  This week has been mainly one of back to work and new staff stuff. It's all just flown by. We took some of the new staff to frisbee on Sunday and I really enjoyed myself. This was followed by a games night with the Wagner's online. I was crying with laughter at some of it. It's been so jammed packed that I don't remember half of it and no time to just sit and reflect. What has been nice is the few chats with pals that are at home or have left here who I am so pleased I feel that connection to.  I've been really enjoying getting to know the new staff and then we had our 2 INSET days - in service training, one of the highlights being the team building which was actually very competitive and I found myself shouting at a quite old Malawian lady who works in boarding 'get him, get him.... don't let him through' She seemed to have fun too  I also enjoyed the feeling of promise and expectation you have with a new year. We really are a great school and looking...