Up early to help ease our youngest out of the house. Today was his first day of a two-week trial at the York Steiner School, where we hope there will be a nicer atmosphere than at Archbishop Holgate's where bullying is rife and the school don't admit there's a problem so they don't have to deal with it.
So, the taxi arrived at 8.15 and 5 minutes later, he and Gill were heading away, in the freezing rain. It was a good idea not to try to cycle there on the first day. Amazingly, Gill got a bus back into town and then another one straight out and was home by 9. 15. She got an all day rover ticket as she'd planned to go to the library with our oldest child as part of his home schooling, but actually he wasn't feeling up to it so that didn't happen. Gill and I were discussing things when there was a phone call at 10.15 from Catherine at York Rotters asking me if I was planning on coming to the Management Group meeting. Whoops!
So i quickly got dressed and jumped on my bike and got down to the Environment Centre in about 10 minutes. The meeting was subdued as my colleagues wanted to know what I knew about Stella Rawson, and of course this saddened all of us. However, we had to get on with the meeting, which was mainly about our work plans for the 2011-2012 financial year, so our talk was of targets and aims, objectives and how to communicate, how to enthuse, persuade even. We decided to target two wards, which we have data for from a Council survey last year, and we decided to see if we could get the composting rate up by 5% and 3% in those wards, we worked out how many households this would be and how many tonnes of landfill it would prevent, based on DEFRA figures. It was an excellent meeting for discussion, decisions and successful group working.
I got home at about 1pm and Gill was in the house, not heading for the library as I'd expected. I had a quick lunch and just before 2, cycled off to see Pauline who'd asked me to help her cut some kindling. She has been buying logs at £70 a load, but to get them lit, needs kindling. So I spent about 45 minutes doing that, then it was time for coffee and some good conversations, about all sorts of things, as always with Pauline.
I visited Alligator on the way home, picking up a good load for my compost heaps, and then popped in on Country Fresh where Martin gave me 4 spare pineapples. Nice!
When I got home, Gill was dancing round looking very pleased... the day at the Steiner School had been very successful and our little one was happy. HOORAY! This is a huge weight off our minds.
A fruity evening... carving up pineapple for anyone who wanted it and a load on the stove to dry, and watched a programme on measuring temperature with our eldest, ad I enjoyed Newsnight as I'm very interested in the Kingsnorth collapsed trial and the undercover cop story.
However, although I heated bathwater, I didn't get as far as a bath so I must have one tomorrow as I'm working tomorrow evening and the next day.
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4 comments:
I'm glad your kids are happy in their new set up, but I think your comments about Archbishops are unfair and unjustified, to be honest. It's not fair to damn the whole place and everyone's else's experience just because it wasn't for you, and I think your sweeping statements about bullying being 'rife' are a bit out of order. I don't mean this to be overtly impolite or rude, but I think it would be fab if you could just stop badmouthing the school.
Colin, if you knew what I know, I think you'd be shocked. There's a lot I'm not putting in this blog.
I re-iterate that from our experience, bullying is not dealt with and the communication within the school is apalling. This is partly informed by what a policeman said to us about what he knows about the school, and the experiences of our two children, the experiences of several other children and parents, and our experiences of some of the staff.
However, I won't write much more about Archies as we are home educating one child and the other seems happy at another school.
I hope your experience of Archies is better than ours. Sorry you've been upset by my recounting of our experience.
Thanks for your reply!
I wouldn't say I was upset by your comments, exactly, but I certainly refute them. Perhaps, however, we should both remember that our experiences of the same school are subjective. Both my children have been and are very happy there, achieved well, and made lots of good friends - so I tend to go around telling people I think it's an excellent and happy school: you had problems, and so you're telling everyone it's a terrible school. I appreciate that you're being circumspect about posting details re. your sons, and I respect that, but acknowledging one's own subjectivity in any matter is surely always a good thing to try to do.
All the best with everything else.
Thanks Colin, glad that your children are happy there. I'm glad they've avoided being bullied and attacked. Long may that last.
John
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