A really good day! Up bright and early as I had an interview at Archbishop Holgate's School at 9.15 with the Head Teacher. As Gill was taking our youngest down to the Steiner School, she couldn't come to this meeting. So, yesterday, our lovely friend Melody had agreed to come to the meeting and represent Gill, and take notes. In meetings with teachers at her son's school, Melody routinely records the conversation on a dictaphone, so she brought one of those with her, and arrived sometime before 9am so she could walk up with me.
So, we walked up to the school and the Head and the head of Pastoral Care met us and invited us into the office. However, they weren't happy to have the conversation recorded, saying it was 'confrontational'. They offered a note-taker and promised to email the notes to me so Gill could read them. I explained I wanted to set the scene and review what had actually happened to our son over the two years there, and to briefly outline what I felt the problems were within the school, with the only aim to help other pupils (and their families) avoid similar problems. So, it was a good meeting as I'd started with this positive approach. Both the teachers offered sincere apologies about what had happened. They were shocked that the nice policeman who'd visited us about one incident had said that the school didn't want to admit there was a problem with bullying as they'd then have to deal with it. But in general, it was a good meeting and it is possible that the school may make some changes to improve communication and to hopefully do more to prevent the bullies, and engender a culture of respect and love. But maybe that's asking a bit much from today's society?
I walked back with Melody feeling happy. Our boys are happy now they're not in that school. Melody came home and had some lemon cake that Gill had made specially for her, as a thank you for going this morning.
I then went and did a lot of pruning, and just about finished the loganberries. I'll need to tie in the canes which will fruit this year. I did a bit of compost heap adding and a bit of logpile building. Also visited Richard to get veggies and came home with a large stash of compostables.
In the evening I went down to Heslington with our eldest for his weekly Computer Graphics lesson, and came back via a logpile, cycling back again for 8pm and had a nice walk back. Our youngest son has had a lovely week at the Steiner School, which is great!
So, a good day and hopefully now things with the children will settle down and our lives will become easier. I look forward to not needing to mention them in this blog... it isn't about them, it's about how I live a low carbon lifestyle but recently my life has been almost completely overtaken by stuff to do with the difficulties at school. I feel today has somewhat drawn a line under that.
Showing posts with label Archbishop Holgate's School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archbishop Holgate's School. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Wednesday 5th January 11
I got up early as it was the first day of term and I had to be around to help. However, our youngest decided to not try going back to Archbishop Holgate's, and will therefore start a two week trial at the Steiner School next Monday.
However, as we had not had a reply from the Head, I wrote a letter to him asking him if he'd had it, and if so, he had anything to say about the issues. I hand delivered this. Later, we got a phone call saying they hadn't received the first letter. Gill rang the LEA, and they had been sent a Fax of it, so there are obviously major communication breakdowns at that school. We'll be invited to an interview there next week, apparently. I am very angry with the way our children have been treated, and I'm not going to back down and accept that it was all a big mistake. I believe that the school are denying that they have a problem with bullying as if they admitted to it, they'd be obliged to do something about it. And that's tough, in a culture which likes bullying behaviour and condones the belittling of people.
So both boys were at home and working, reading, and had a quiet and sedentary day.
I went on the HMRC website and submitted my tax returns. It took a couple of hours, but ended up with a calculation with them owing me 25 pence. My earnings have gone right down, so this is the first year I've not had to pay tax for well over a decade.
Got a booking for a Charity Cabaret for mainly retired and elderly folks in February, in Fulford. Should be interesting... I'll adapt my Woodlands MS Respite Care Centre show for them!
I made soup for tea... pumpkin and parsnip, as suggested by my dear mother who left a comment on yesterday's post. I was considering soup but was also considering a nutloaf. Nutloaf tomorrow... will contain some soup!
At about 6.30, I set off walking into town with our eldest son, to attend the Cafe Scientifique at City Screen. The talk was by Tim Clarke, from the Department of Electronics at the University of York, and was called 'Control: A Fundamental For Life and Living'. He's a control engineer, and gave lots of interesting examples of different sorts of controls... from genetic controls with genes being switched on and off, biological controls in homeostasis, keeping our body temperature constant, and biochemical controls, such as insulin and it's role in the management of blood sugar. It was quite an unusual talk, very wide ranging, from inverted pendulums to flocks of birds through to robots. For instance, check out this video of the Big Dog Robot. Really amazing. At one stage, Tim wanted a volunteer from the audience to demonstrate something, and as there were no other volunteers, I put my hand up. What he wanted me to do was to balance a stick on my hand... he couldn't have chosen a better person to use, as I was able to not only do it but describe what I was doing.
So, a good talk, I'm not sure I learned a lot of new stuff, but it was good to learn the meme of 'control' and put all these various things into it. Enjoyed the walk home and the discussions with my son.
My Feedjit widget tells me that over the past couple of days I've had a visitor on here from Buckingham (maybe, it's not always accurate!) who's been poring over this blog, viewing all sorts of links and spending more time than most do here! Makes me curious! So hello Person from Buckingham, on Internet Explorer 8.0 and using Windows Vista! Glad you're exploring! Do say hello!
However, as we had not had a reply from the Head, I wrote a letter to him asking him if he'd had it, and if so, he had anything to say about the issues. I hand delivered this. Later, we got a phone call saying they hadn't received the first letter. Gill rang the LEA, and they had been sent a Fax of it, so there are obviously major communication breakdowns at that school. We'll be invited to an interview there next week, apparently. I am very angry with the way our children have been treated, and I'm not going to back down and accept that it was all a big mistake. I believe that the school are denying that they have a problem with bullying as if they admitted to it, they'd be obliged to do something about it. And that's tough, in a culture which likes bullying behaviour and condones the belittling of people.
So both boys were at home and working, reading, and had a quiet and sedentary day.
I went on the HMRC website and submitted my tax returns. It took a couple of hours, but ended up with a calculation with them owing me 25 pence. My earnings have gone right down, so this is the first year I've not had to pay tax for well over a decade.
Got a booking for a Charity Cabaret for mainly retired and elderly folks in February, in Fulford. Should be interesting... I'll adapt my Woodlands MS Respite Care Centre show for them!
I made soup for tea... pumpkin and parsnip, as suggested by my dear mother who left a comment on yesterday's post. I was considering soup but was also considering a nutloaf. Nutloaf tomorrow... will contain some soup!
At about 6.30, I set off walking into town with our eldest son, to attend the Cafe Scientifique at City Screen. The talk was by Tim Clarke, from the Department of Electronics at the University of York, and was called 'Control: A Fundamental For Life and Living'. He's a control engineer, and gave lots of interesting examples of different sorts of controls... from genetic controls with genes being switched on and off, biological controls in homeostasis, keeping our body temperature constant, and biochemical controls, such as insulin and it's role in the management of blood sugar. It was quite an unusual talk, very wide ranging, from inverted pendulums to flocks of birds through to robots. For instance, check out this video of the Big Dog Robot. Really amazing. At one stage, Tim wanted a volunteer from the audience to demonstrate something, and as there were no other volunteers, I put my hand up. What he wanted me to do was to balance a stick on my hand... he couldn't have chosen a better person to use, as I was able to not only do it but describe what I was doing.
So, a good talk, I'm not sure I learned a lot of new stuff, but it was good to learn the meme of 'control' and put all these various things into it. Enjoyed the walk home and the discussions with my son.
My Feedjit widget tells me that over the past couple of days I've had a visitor on here from Buckingham (maybe, it's not always accurate!) who's been poring over this blog, viewing all sorts of links and spending more time than most do here! Makes me curious! So hello Person from Buckingham, on Internet Explorer 8.0 and using Windows Vista! Glad you're exploring! Do say hello!
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