{"id":179,"date":"2021-05-07T16:00:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/?p=179"},"modified":"2022-01-20T09:17:55","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T09:17:55","slug":"connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/2021\/05\/07\/connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always looking for books which might change me, by small degrees, into a slightly better version of myself. Last year I read\u00a0 \u2018Poverty Safari\u2019 by Darren McGarvey which describes a life blighted by poverty, growing up on a Glasgow estate . When the complex causes of poverty have been considered; when everyone (including Tory politicians, Guardian readers and Darren himself) have been handed out their share of responsibility for its ongoing perpetuation; when all is said and done, he whittles his childhood dilemma back to its core, \u2018Beneath everything, all I was looking for was connection; to feel understood, heard and supported; to feel respected, safe and loved.\u2019 When I\u2019m trying to decipher a child\u2019s behaviour in school (or an adult\u2019s or my own behaviour for that matter), I often find myself hacking back to a list of possibilities not dissimilar to this one. We\u2019re people and very many of us need similar provisions in our emotional larders to get through the day. This is the human level, the basic \u2018this is what I need\u2019 level that I believe should always define our thinking and our choices in school.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week I stumbled into a KS2 assembly wholly unprepared. I have a significant back catalogue of scintillating advice (pity the poor children) and story-telling that I can draw on after 18 years as a head teacher but on this occasion my mind went blank so I blathered out the question most on my mind, \u2018What should a school be like?\u2019 Second note here to peddlers of the \u2018children are troublesome sub-strata\u2019 narrative: give them half a chance and they have answers full of natural wisdom and without some of the fog of adult life impeding their view. The response ran something like this: \u2018A school should be fun and full of play\u2026a place to mix with other people\u2026to learn from and with them\u2026 a place for friendship and from that the feeling of being connected and supported\u2026a preparation for life beyond by being a positive place.\u2019 Admittedly the word \u2018connected\u2019 sounds like one of mine but other than that, this is a fairly accurate precis of their response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always looking for books which might change me, by small degrees, into a slightly better version of myself. Last year I read\u00a0 \u2018Poverty Safari\u2019 by Darren McGarvey which describes a life blighted by poverty, growing up on a Glasgow estate . When the complex causes of poverty have been considered; when everyone (including Tory … Continue reading “Connection”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minchacademy.net\/headteacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}