It turns out that a four-day week at Pennthorpe is no less busy than a five-day week. In fact, we simply ensure that we get a full five days’ worth of learning, events and fun into 20% less time.
On Tuesday, our Year 6 pupils had an early start before heading off to the Isle of White for four days of adventure! It sounds like they have had a wonderful time, and I am looking forward to hearing all about it when they arrive back in the next hour or so. Trips form a massive part of a child’s educational experience, and they learn so much from being away from home and challenging themselves in a completely different way to how they usually would in the classroom. A huge thank you to Charlotte Murray and Chris Franklin for organising and leading the trip and for Alice Partridge and Danielle Norwood for supporting and ensuring that the children had a wonderful time. They all deserve a relaxing weekend!
Tomorrow is an incredibly exciting day for the school with the launch and Grand Opening of our brand-new Forest and Farm! I had the pleasure of meeting the four new furry additions to Pennthorpe on Thursday evening. I didn’t know what a ‘Netherland Dwarf Rabbit’ was 24 hours ago but trust me, they might be the cutest animals I have ever seen! We are expecting over 120 guests at school tomorrow morning to enjoy the event which is amazing! Lots of our visitors are from outside of the Pennthorpe community so it is great to see people wanting to come visit our school and find out more about the amazing things we do here. An order of events for tomorrow can be found here; we look forward to seeing lots of you in the morning.
I wrote to you earlier in the week announcing that Emma Gould will be joining our team in September as Deputy Head, Pastoral, which I am incredibly excited about. Her experience speaks for itself but just as importantly, she is very Pennthorpe and really understands what our school is all about. She is incredibly child focussed and I look forward to you all meeting her over the next few months. In other staffing news, I am delighted to share that Hannah Golchin will be returning to Pennthorpe on Monday 1st June as Director of Performing Arts. Hannah has thoroughly enjoyed her maternity time with William (who is gorgeous!) but is also looking forward to getting back into school and working with the children in music and drama lessons again. I would like to take this opportunity to formally thank Freya Conway, for the incredible job she has done leading the department during Hannah’s maternity leave. Freya has worked tirelessly to produce some magical performances and really has given so many children so much self-confidence and belief.
At the start of the summer term, we have also had a focus on the learning environments around the school and the impact these have on children’s learning. Mrs Tso spoke to staff about this at INSET and it is wonderful to see the classrooms already looking like more engaging places because of this. You will hopefully see our new writing display on the curved wall of the main building which celebrates the progress children make from initial mark making in the Nursery to the incredible craft of our young writers in Year 8. It truly demonstrates the amazing progress children make in the eleven years they are with us and what a fantastic job our teachers do. Next on the list for a ‘revamp’ is the PA studio where the endlessly talented Miss Raz is designing a new Performing Arts Mural for the main wall which she will paint alongside our Art & DT Prodigy pupils over the coming weeks. We will also be selecting some photos from our most recent performance to put up on the walls to celebrate and inspire the children of Pennthorpe. Please do pop up there to see it after half term as I really do think it will be transformative!
Finally, I leave with you with something that really made me smile this week. On the gate on Wednesday morning, I was given a present by a Year 1 girl; a bag with my name on it. Inside the bag, was a dragon egg! She simply wanted to give me a dragon for my office because she loves dragons and wanted to share that passion with me. She told me all about how to train it and it now sits on my bookshelf; it is yet to be trained. Alongside the dragon, I also received four different dragon stickers. Now, I love a sticker, so I proudly wore one of them the next day on the gate. After a quick chat with the girl who had given it to me, I had to jump in the car to my first ‘District 3 Heads’ meeting. This is a meeting with all the Heads of independent schools in the area, about 16 in total at yesterday’s meeting. It was a chance to share experiences, offer advice and learn from each other. As my first D3 meeting as a Head, I will admit, I was slightly nervous. However, the meeting went well, there were some useful TED-style talks, and it was great to meet some of the Heads in the local area. On getting back in the car, pleased that I had not broken any ‘Heads rules’ or embarrassed myself, I looked down to realise I was still wearing my pink dragon sticker on the lapel of my blazer…. and not one person mentioned it! No questions, no nods or smiles at the badge. Nothing! Needless to say, I will now be wearing a dragon sticker to every District 3 meeting until someone surely has to ask me, ‘Sorry Jon, what’s with the dragon stickers?’. Or maybe they won’t – maybe I will become known as the Dragon Head, and it will never be questioned!
Either way, it made me proud to wear something that a child had given so generously because it was her passion and she wanted to share it. And when I reflected on the incident last night, I think it probably sums up Pennthorpe and what we are ‘all about’ quite well. Be proud of who you are, share your passions with others and don’t worry if sometimes, you might look a bit silly!
