Educating Essex

Now is the time of many retrospectives including Charlie Booker’s Words of the Year 2011. I imagine the awards being announced. Best newcomer: “Merkozy”, with the word trailing its expensive gown onto the stage to accept the award and thanking their producers, the euro crisis, and all those who have used the word. Word of the Year is, apparently, “OCCUPY”. Many of us would agree with that, and with the accompanying nomination of Giles Fraser for the Twurch of England’s Priest of the Year. Mercifully there is no award ceremony. Imagine trying to get Occupy off the stage.

Janine caters for all tastes at
Hollymere

We have our own Herbert Awards, which reflect a local viewpoint. Community of the Year is awarded to Hollymere for developing a community of care and promoting independent living for those who would otherwise be heavily dependant and cut off from others. Hollymere represents a new design for living for older people, with its own “high street” open to the wider community, community rooms, restaurant and gym. Designers, carers and residents should come to the stage together to receive this award.Our prize for Butcher of our world doesn’t go to some toppled tyrant, but to our local butchers, Drury’s, who bring life, custom, humour and service (as well as some quality fresh food) to our local parade of shops.

In the sports category, Andy Murray has provided many moments when it has been hard to tear ourselves away from the set (!). There is only one team ever up for nomination: Leicester City. This year the only prize they win is Most Disappointing.

Our Concert of the Year was Paul Simon at the Manchester Apollo, though Take That take it for Extravaganza of the Year. Earworm is a word that took my fancy this year, and although I have been introduced to some good new (to me) music, such as Noah and the Whale, John Martyn, P J Harvey, the Earworm Prize goes to Fleet Foxes‘ Helplessness Blues.

Nominations for Film of the Year are disappointingly few. Once again we failed to deliver on our intention to get out more, which for us means going to the cinema. Yet we have seen some outstanding films, including The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Inbetweeners, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Hugo and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. For us there wasn’t anything to choose between them. We enjoyed them all, though not sure enjoyment is the word to use in relation to Kevin.

While everyone was watching Arab Springwatch, we had our own springwatch, which began with the discovery of a dunnock’s nest in the back garden, and then a robin’s nest in the bush at the front of the house. We kept an eye on the hatchlings and fledglings and felt personally responsible when they flew their nests (on the same day).

Theological Find of the Year is awarded to Paula Gooder for sharing her research findings that ancient Hebrew cosmology shows a longstanding theological enterprise to bring God down to earth, and to Ivan Illich and his conspiracy “theory”.

Most Creative Moment was putting together a series of photos for Ginger’s Day Out (in Llandudno) for children at Christ Church School, Ellesmere Port. There’s a book inside everyone – or, so they say. I think I’ve found mine!

Blogging Moment of the Year was getting feedback from Vic Goddard, Headteacher of Passmores Academy, the school featured in Channel 4’s Educating Essex for a post I wrote in response to that series.

There are joint winners of the prize for Most Helpful Intervention in my Thinking about Leadership. Heather Gold helped me to understand the importance of giving in her instructions how to be a tummler. Meg Wheatley is helping me to understand that we have to change our mind about leadership and organisation. Dee Hock led me to her, and also wrote of what he learned about organisation and leadership from the ground beneath his feet:

Billions upon billions of self-organising interactions are occurring second by second in the square yard of soil, each inter-connecing, relating, creating,and shaping self and others. Every particle is inseparable interacting and relating to others, and they still to others, unto the remote reaches of the universe and beyond – beyond knowing – but not beyond awareness, respect and love. The mystery of it all is overwhelmingly beautiful. Birth of the Chaordic Age. page 288.

Comedy of the Year goes to Rhod Gilbert for his routine about the tooth brush. There were many other contenders.

I am going to give my Mum the Lifetime Achievement Award. You have to be frail to qualify for lifetime achievement awards. She is now frail enough and now is more naturally retrospective. I have been surprised by some of the things she has got up to. For example, going into her city centre on her own at 3 in the morning to look for someone addicted to heroin on behalf of her worried parents (and finding her). She has also helped me understand that the delivery of a child isn’t a once in a lifetime event, but a lifetime’s work.

Passmores School, Harlow – the scene for Educating Essex.
This photo from vincentballard

Well done Channel 4 for the Educating Essex series. (Though the Daily Wail has a rather different take on it).We have enjoyed seeing a vibrant learning community built round dedicated professional teachers: Mr Goddard as Head (he has blogged), Mr Drew as Deputy and Miss Conway as Head of Year 11 who seem dedicated to responding to the emotional needs of this group of adolescent teenagers. It was good to hear Mr Drew telling his Year 11 students “You have no idea how much I like teaching you, you have no idea.” Passmores School, near Harlow, is an “outstanding school” according to Ofsted which has more than met its target of students’ GCSE achievements.

Ryan, with Aspergers, is beautiful, and moved us (as well as his fellow students and headteacher) to tears with his impromptu speech on leaving day when he declared the two years spent in school as the happiest of his life, with the school becoming his family. Here the argument about whether Asperger’s is “disease” or “syndrome” is settled in favour of syndrome – a difference rather than a disability to be cured.

Vinni’s story is told with great senstivity. He is in care twenty miles from school, family and friends. He loses his bet that he will be at the end of year prom by failing to attend school for the last term and so forfeits his right to the prom ticket. He does turn up to see what he is missing. I guess a lot of people would have said “What are you doing here?” Not so Mr Goddard. He greets Vinni with “Great to see you. Sorry you’re not here properly.” Mr Goddard comments that Vinni is only a child – one let down by so many people – including himself.

On a day when the media had been discussing the depressing findings of ICM research published by Barnardo’s, it was good to see youngsters managing to live and work in a community, and to see dedicated professional teachers flexible enough to work close to the emotional and educational needs of the students. That survey suggests that 44% adults agree that British children are becoming “feral”, and that 47% say that the trouble with young people is that they are “angry, violent and abusive”. Oh, the power of the Daily Wail/Fail as the hidden persuader of our perceptions.

I have often noticed the phrase that dates when there were better times. It is “thirty years ago”, and 30 years ago has always been better than today. 30 years could be the measure of a generation, and a way of expressing our fear of the next generation and how they are going to be as members of “our” society. Steven Pinker observes that one of the effects of ageing is to be negatively judgemental about the next generation, and to be inclined to believe that the past (which is our generation) is always better than the present. In his book, The Better Angels of Nature he demonstrates that the (further) past was a far nastier place than we might have imagined and that the present is far nicer than we might have noticed.

Asperger’s Syndrome Foundation

Tag: Educating Essex

And the award for the best …. is