Celebrating the Teaching Profession

As we approach the end of another busy academic year, exhausted from the myriad of educational reform, end of term productions and sports days; I was asked to reflect on things to be thankful for.  

As a profession, we can at times give the impression that life in school and education as a whole is a quagmire of trauma and pain. It is far from the case, the profession is bursting with optimistic, passionate and positive staff from our school leaders plotting the most irresistible curriculum, our class teachers delivering the most inspirational lessons and our support teams nurturing the most vulnerable of pupils.  

Our year at Warden House Primary School has been as crazy as ever, here are a few reflections on another irresistible year in education.

Our year began with an announcement that our school has been accredited as a National Support School and we opened on the 1st September as a new Multi-Academy Trust. We welcomed our children into a fresh year with all the optimism and energy that a well-deserved break in August could muster.  

Our Early Years play area had been renovated with a vibrant and engaging soft play surface and new mud kitchen built by our talented Site Manager; the children were thrilled. 

In September our term begins with an Orientation Unit that focuses on settling children into their new class and routines.  We then gather together in week three as a school for Oracy Week.  

The focus for Oracy Week was The Heroic Journey. We hired an actor who took the children into a world of fantasy as they plotted a school wide story based on an ancient story writing frame. Children and staff suspended their disbelief and dressed as characters from the story and retold our shared story throughout the week. This provided a powerful springboard to our children's writing and reading across the year.

As the term progressed, we entered into the spirit of harvest, reflected respectfully on the stories around Armistice Day and brought out the glitter for our Christmas productions.  As staff, we had undertaken our appraisal reviews and shared the outcomes of our research based targets. We gathered at a beautiful venue called Pines Calyx in St Margarets-at-Cliffe to share the fruits of our research with the whole staff team during a school TeachMeet.  

The session was inspiring.  Our fifty six staff were all present and many delivered a four minute synopsis of their research. Here is a blog of the presentations. Making time to share our practice with one another is so often overlooked but offers such a powerful and relationship building outcome for our staff team.

In an age where reading, writing, maths, punctuation, grammar and spelling are so much at the fore; our commitment to the arts has never been more important. Christmas time provides such a rich opportunity to deliver meaningful arts based learning. This Christmas was no exception; our four year olds donned their costumes and performed a beautiful narrative about Santa's challenge of delivering his presents to all the children and animals. 

Our KS1 children performed the inspiring story of Baboushka with song and music while our Year 3 children retold the story of The Polar Express linked to their Polar Exploration topic work. We even put on an impromptu Staff Pantomime for the children, what a laugh we all had, especially at the expense of @primaryreflect as the pantomime dame (oh yes he did!).

More arts skills were developed through the 'Bold As!' project. This project involved teaching a class of thirty Year 5 children to play a trombone (I know, what were we thinking?). The children performed with a local brass orchestra to the delight of their parents after just twelve weeks of tuition. Meanwhile, our choir were thrilled to perform in the Young Voices Choir at the O2 Arena.  

Our sports curriculum has given our children opportunities to experience a wide range of activities including golf, Geocaching, archery, carting, kinball, sumo-wrestling, Tia-Chi, gym acro and many more.  All celebrated across our school community during one of our five Olympic and Paralympic days.  Our paralympic days were also attended by the inspirational javelin and shot athlete Tom Irving and Commonwealth Gold swimmer Chris Cooke; inspiring people inspiring our children.

Our children across our collaboration of eleven primary schools have also competed in a range of competitions including our Spelling Bee and maths challenge. The Spelling Bee, organised by the brilliant @AnneMarieMiddle has charged our children with the enthusiasm for spelling and raised the profile of spelling across our eleven schools. 

Children's writing has also been extended through projects led by the talented @MisterHackett like 'Writing in the Myst' where children enter the world of a narrative computer game. As a result of the project, children's enthusiasm for writing grew and the quality of progress rose for all.

Our year ended with a whole school celebration of work. We call it Exhibition Evening. This entails setting out work from across the year in every classroom. Exhibition Evening provides children with a moment where they can show their work to family and friends.  

Parents love the event and there is a palpable buzz of excitement across the school during the evening as children proudly show off their work and take a sneaky peek across the school at what to expect in the coming year.

At the root of all this irresistible learning are a team of dedicated and professional staff who care deeply about our children and families. Through their enthusiasm and compassion, our children have experienced a year in school in which their learning has deepened, their skills have broadened and their friendships have grown.  

The successful year for the children at Warden House has also been replicated at the 16,839 primary schools in primary schools across the UK serving 16,923,151 children. As we break for the summer, take a moment to reflect on the irresistible learning that has been provided for all our children by the amazing staff in schools across our land. 

Let's continue to shout about how amazing our profession is. If you feel moved to celebrate a member of your staff, your child's teacher, caretaker, governor, or whosoever works in the field of education; why not complete an application to Her Majesty's Honours Committee - let's nominate amazing school staff and let the nation know how lucky they are to have the finest schools the world can offer.

Enjoy a well-deserved break and remember to celebrate success, teaching is great!

Learn about other school's incredible experiences such as Art Week at Herne Bay Junior School!