Appeal to Governors

The week started with a difficult meeting to discuss an excluded student's return to school with the boy and his family claiming, with some justification I feel, that the exclusion was unfair and expressing concerns about the lesson and the fairly chaotic nature of the class at the time the incident took place. I ought not to say anything about the incident itself but the student returned today and feels aggrieved by what happened. Given that the matter is going to the Governing Body, I find myself wondering how rigorously we ought to enforce the sanctions which follow other students returning to school.

The next meeting saw a student return to school with his father and totally refuse to accept what the teacher said was correct. Again he claimed to have been the victim and was completely unwilling to engage in any discussion. Having just joined us in Year 10 from another school he did not seem to care about anything we wanted to talk about and was excluded for a further period of time pending another meeting. His father said virtually nothing during the meeting.

On the other hand things have settled this week with fewer exclusions and fewer people in detention. We shall see how that develops over the next weeks and months.

In lesson we read 'Snowdrops' from the anthology recently and have been looking at the ideas in the story including the use of symbolism and rebirth in nature and in our lives. As she wrote her response one girl was concerned about the boy killed in the motorcycle accident being taken to the cemetery to be buried. For some reason she became fixated with the idea that the boy had not died because the snowdrops come back and so must the boy. Which is fair when you consider the use of the flowers as representing a wider message but incorrect thus demonstrating how literal some people can be and how you cannot make assumptions when teaching.

One other thing I ought to mention is that I have been looking at the layout of the blog. As something I only wrote for others to read in the family or perhaps friends and as a means of almost keeping a diary, the appearance and layout wasn't that important. However, I have been looking at improving the look especially when I see other blogs. I just don't know much about it. I see the links have slipped to the bottom of the page because they are too long I imagine and that is perhaps something I can work on. I have inserted the site counter and was pleased to see people do read this! Even if it is completely amateurish and not very interesting to anyone but me

It has even been viewed from the US! I wonder how people end up here. I've also been getting emails from anonymous quoting The Clash which isn't a bad start. Nice to get feedback - isn't the internet interesting. If anyone has sites to read let me know and I can add them to mine too.

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