Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Schools and COVID-19: Gloom and Doom, Hope and Glory

What Schools Have To Be About Now A colleague shared an article  – That Discomfort You’re  Feeling Is Grief from the Harvard Business Review and it struck a chord. Suddenly – with the pandemic – the future, that had been lurking and looming on a horizon in plain sight, had arrived all at once. And everything was different and everything…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Disease and Pestilence: School Edition

As my inbox and timeline fill up with Corona Virus updates and advisories this is little footnote to my post about the much fabled NYC Lincoln School (1917-1940) The School is Dead, Long Live the School. Lincoln was dedicated to experimentation and research in the interests of uncovering the best ways to education children in a modern democratic society. They…

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Books, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The School is Dead, Long Live the School

This is actually a story about books but somehow the schools took over. It does start with the books – four old books from a library of a defunct school and each with this lovely bookplate.  Beneath the tree is the line  “And some of the blossoms shall turn to fruit” And some of the blossoms of the Lincoln School…

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Education, Headlands, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Welsh Connection

This is a follow-up to The Queen of Mean and one of a series about Headlands Grammar School and what I remember and learned in my seven year sentence. By the time I got to the sixth form I had learned to keep below Miss Jacob’s radar and anyway she had younger fish to fry. Hundreds of them – all…

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Education, Headlands, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Queen of Mean

When Senior Mistress Miss A. Jacob retired from Headlands School Mr.Magson had this to say in the school magazine: Two comments about that: While I don’t doubt the truth of Magson’s words, I didn’t know then, and don’t know now, any student who had a good word to say about Miss Jacob. There’s a little collection of some of the…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Onwards: The Strategic Advance

I’ve long thought that the word retreat should not be linked with strategic planning. It’s a bit of a misnomer for what should be a process of setting direction forward. There’s nothing wrong with “retreats” and often they are essential components – creating the thinking space for assessment and reflection. That kind of indwelling can contribute to the careful assessment…

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Education, Headlands, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Can and May and Merv

Everyone who ever had Merv Comrie as a teacher at Headlands has a story to tell. Merv left an indelible impression on all those he taught.  My own favorite moment came as he was taking class 4M through Macbeth explaining everything line by line – that time-honored English teacher way of ensuring students will not get any pleasure from Shakespeare.…

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Education, Headlands, RattleBag and Rhubarb

And of Course We Called Her “Nutty”

Before I learned to be afraid of Miss Jacob I was terrified by Miss Almond. First week, first form at Headlands. First history class. Miss Almond, in her academic gown presiding. She was one of those teachers who could see round corners and knew what you were up to even though she was busy writing on the big roller board…

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Education, Headlands, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Changed Face of School Leadership

The schools we attend and work in help shape the people we become. Seven of my sixty plus years in school were spent here – at Headlands Grammar School, Swindon. It is long gone and the site redeveloped.  When people go into education as a career they sometimes seek to replicate the good experiences of their own schooling. Others dedicate…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Escape from the Spirit People

When a re-wired, pack-rat educator takes a deep dive in the basement there’s no telling what she will find in those decades worth of edutrivia. (This post by the way is  Part Three of “My Life with the Spirit People”. Part One is here. You may ask: “Where is Part Two?” Well – I haven’t written it yet.) Take this…

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Books, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Angela Brazil, the Tribal World of School and School Change

Scooterons-nous vite. It’s Back to School with Angela Brazil Long before Harry Potter – and indeed long before all those school story authors who gave us Malory Towers and St. Clare’s and the Chalet School and the Abbey School and Jennings and Billy Bunter – there was Angela Brazil. Brazil – rhymes with dazzle – didn’t invent the school story…

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Art, Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

For No Good Reason

I love this poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s a commentary on the fact that – even in the darkest times – simple acts of unexpected generosity and kindness have the capacity to remind us that not everything is bleak and hopeless even in a nasty, brutish, trumpian world. Optimistic Little Poem Now and then it happens that somebody shouts…

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Books, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

Angela Brazil – Rhymes With Dazzle – at Dunkirk

When intelligence officer Arthur Marshall was on the beach at Dunkirk in 1940 he turned to the work of Angela Brazil for psychological support. Wounded in the ankle, he encouraged his men to face enemy fire and so reach the awaiting ships with: “Come on, girls, who’s on for the Botany Walk?” In his autobiography he explained how he managed…

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Art, Education

Scissors and a Glue Stick

When I first became a head of school I had this daft idea that I would make personalized cut-and-paste greetings cards for every member the faculty and staff. It was daft on a number of levels including the sheer daunting nature of the task and the time it would take that I didn’t have.  But I set to work that…

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Education, Food, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Street of the Fruit Stalls

Amazing how hard it sometimes can be to find things on the intertubes. There was a poem I remembered from my London teaching days and I tried every which way to find it. It was about fruit piled up in a market so I tried all kinds of variations on a search theme and came up with nothing. I even…

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