I write for educational reasons, professional discourse and for therapy, so I am not quite certain where this blog sits… but if you are seeking the most up-to-date information and support, go here now.

Since publishing this blog last week, our SchoolTV has published this really helpful newsletter looking at Exam Jitters, https://clairescourt.uk.schooltv.me/newsletter/exam-jitters, and it really does provide some excellent up to date support for students and parents – if your family is facing exam jitters, these linked articles and videos are worth tuning in to.

Summer Term 2024 started for academic staff on Monday 15 April, so apart from the evidence that my communications’ log suggests, work all day Wednesday, Friday and Sunday afternoon prior, my start of Summer term did too. I love what I do, and in every respect, so I have been a tad anxious about the arrival of some vegetable pea seedlings too into the greenhouse. The first set I planted out straight away at end of March into the allotment; marked ‘Winter Hardy’, I should have known better of course. The slugs of the Jubilee Allotments in Ray Mill Road West made very short work of them. Pleasingly the asparagus at the home ‘flower bed’ have shown early, and before the hail of Tuesday could smash them to the ground, Mrs W had harvested and we ate a wonderful chicken & asparagus risotto that evening, thank you. It’s Master-chef back on TV week, what were you expecting me to say?

Inviting over 300 staff back to work at close of Easter break always has its moments, and causing half of them to pack into the Senior Boys sports hall, work collaboratively together on issues on ‘safeguarding’ low level concerns, play Policy Bingo and select cards to work out which team to join for an amazing closing session on ‘what group learning really looks like’ levelled my anxieties more than somewhat. At Tuesday morning’s return to school assembly at Senior Boys, celebrating the boys and girls abilities to make ‘History Every Day’ had to be underpinned by the closing message, which is … “It’s our vibrant community that makes us different!” So I did, and you can see the introduction here.

And so the week has moved on, I’ve worked every day well past decency, including writing this postscript at Friday dead of night, and I don’t do this for medals or praise – it’s because I wan’t to start every day well prepped and ready, don’t like a hefty in-tray and above all, always want to be ‘the best I can be’.’ Those of you that know that professional workplace psychometric analysis was all the rage over 20 years ago, and I turned out in my 50s to be an extreme Pioneer, likely to lose my team on the journey if I was not careful but my saving grace was and remains that I can’t bear to let any one else down. This morning we welcomed prospective and existing parents into school for an early Summer term Open Morning visit (the pride that the Year 7 children exude showing our visitors around does make my heart sell with pride), other bits of the day include planning next Friday’s ‘Discovery Day’ for prospective Year 5s to spend a day with us, managing 2 hours of research skills conclusions for GCSE students and rushing over to Juniors at school end to act as emergency taxi driver as our tractor broke down… before a couple more hours of screen time at school and then this…

I am a university psychology graduate so ‘The New York Times’ article 2 years ago came as no surprise to me, stating what the upsides of ‘The Upside of Anxiety are: There are several benefits to having an internal alarm system, experts say’. Please read the article, because it covers this piece really well.

Above all, dear reader, please be assured (as NY Times makes clear), I have always been incredibly kind to myself. After all, I am both born and baptised a Catholic, so know my life commenced with Original Sin, and … perhaps even worse, now categorise myself as ‘lapsed’. The only way to survive such conscious faith-based damnation is to know that other traditions exist: Chelsea, Harlequins and my Golf Handicap in that ascending order of hierarchy. It appears I have many international readers, so for simplicity’s sake, for most of what happens, it’s the journey that’s important – do your best, work hard and be kind – the rest will indeed look after itself. Chelsea, Harlequins and Maidenhead Golf Club will have our victories of course, yet the next day it all starts over.

I’ve worked with so many amazing people over the years (that’s a book or series at least, not a blog post), yet one still local neighbour colleague administrator’s words that saved me 4 decades ago sit at the front of my mind every hour. When reminding of the Protestant Irish saying ‘Life is Hard and Then you Die’, Anita brought me back to ground and helped me understand what being and remaining a school for families is all about. Her son (and I taught him too) lives locally, and he exudes the same mantra too; Success, Wealth, Reputation, perhaps most important of all Integrity are built on working hard and being kind.

Thanks for reading this far. I am definitely one of the survivors of the abusive secondary schooling that was experienced by the vast majority of adolescents in the late sixties and seventies. Corporal punishment was endemic in schools, and discipline was meted out by the year above, and in like exercised onto the year below, At Douai School in 1970, Year 13 refused to carry that baton, and the institution transformed for the better as a consequence. We stopped ‘fagging’ as a privilege as a consequence, and when as a returnee for Upper Sixth for my final term of Oxbridge and Rugby, I saw a school unrecognisable to the one I entered just 4 years previously. Now, 50+ years on, as one of the older grown-ups I know, it’s worth linking to these next paragraphs from SchoolTV – genuinely there are eternal verities that younger adults learning to parent need to learn.

In the SchoolsTV latest publication on Youth Anxiety, Laverne Antrobus writes “Untreated anxiety disorders in children can lead to more serious issues in adulthood. Parents need to educate themselves so they can identify the symptoms early.” Laverne knows stuff, so please sit up and pay attention. My words, not hers, but it’s clear that shorn of faith and societal traditions, the modern parent is seeking to rear their children in a ‘perfect’ world. The last thing I’d ever want to wish on the next generation is what I’ve gone through, and my parents did the same – because they were born and lived through the depression of a decade (the thirties), the second world War and the arrival and use of Nuclear Weapons.

So please take this opportunity to engage with the research and experience of modern, forward thinking professionals who are leading the research-led thinking of our times. And for goodness sake, do have some fun – the cricket season is about to start and whatever the weather, we have some runs to score!