Dear ALS Community,
I have to open my weekly email with thanks to Tilly and Georgie, both in Year 3, who took over the communication last week. I know they both put much thought into writing the piece and I have to admit that I very much enjoy getting to read the weekly email from other members of the school community! For my opening this week, I cannot avoid making comment on the situation in Europe at present. There are far better placed than me to comment on the situation itself so I will focus on how we help children during such uncertain times. At home, I am sure you’ll have had ample conversations and I know the team in school have taken sessions on supporting children to understand what is happening as well as to reduce any anxiety that may be felt about it. When discussing such difficult topics, we cannot promise answers but we can try to help children understand and feel listened to.
This week’s safeguarding information for parents focuses on an app called ‘Wink’. Wink is a messaging app which allows children to connect and communicate with other users. In a similar style to Tinder, Wink uses the swipe method for browsing profiles and accepting or declining them. Once two users have accepted each other by swiping on each other’s profile, they can then communicate and play games online together. The fact that Wink allows children to share photos, personal information and their location with other users has caused significant concern. In the guide, you'll find tips on a number of potential risks such as grooming, cyberbullying and inappropriate content. If you’d like more advice or support in regards to this topic, or other topics like this, please reach out to a school DSL (Mr James for Juniors or Mr Owen for Seniors).
For this week, our mantra for next week comes from Dedicas house and is ‘Inspire others by aspiring to be your best’. Mr Scott, Head of Dedicas, writes we may think as ‘normal’ human beings that it could be difficult for us to inspire others in our day to day engagements. However, research from Forbes suggests that it is actually fairly straightforward and that people are inspired by others to be their best as a result of 6 simple characteristics. The relevant characteristics are: courage, empathy, expression of appreciation, being emotionally balanced, believing in collective power, and committing themselves to making a difference. These are all obtainable traits and ones that we can strive towards, and demonstrate that we all have the ability to inspire others regardless of which role we are in within our school, work, and home lives. We continue to be inspired by our pupils at Arnold Lodge. This was evidenced at the recent swimming gala before half term. The courage shown by all pupils regardless of ability was exceptional, as was the empathy shown by the crowd roaring on their classmates in every single race. The fact that our pupils are able to inspire one another should serve to motivate us to do the same, whether that is at work, at home, or in other aspects of life.
This week we have celebrated National Careers Week with talks from members of the ALS Community, from parents to relatives to friends. We have been utterly overwhelmed by the support towards this and the pupils have listened to Pilots, Lawyers, Designers, Town Planners, Entrepreneurs and many more. It is so inspiring for the pupils to hear how career paths change and develop and how the learning that they are doing in the classroom can take them to where they want to go. Very many thanks to all those who have supported this week and made it the success that it has been.
The Arnold Lodge Parents Association are getting together this coming Thursday (17th March) at 2:30pm, venue to be confirmed at the moment. If you are interested in joining the meeting to hear about how you can be involved with ALPA please email [email protected].
A little reminder about Red Nose Day coming up on Friday 18th March, this will be a non-uniform day for a donation of £2. Earlier this term, our ‘Wear it Red’ day raised over £400 for the charity Warwickshire Hearts, thank you to all those who took part in the day. We would also like to say a huge thank you to all those who have dropped off donations to go to Ukraine, we will be dropping these off this weekend. The cake sale this week also went down well, particularly the homemade candy floss, all the funds raised will go to the Red Cross for Ukraine.
At the end of this term, we have a few staff moving on for new roles. Miss Hill (Head of STEM), Miss Bliss (Mathematics) and Miss Badham (Computer Science) will take up new posts. Our new Head of STEM, Mr Dan Brewer, will join us from Alcester Grammar for September 2022 and he comes with a wealth of experience as a long standing science teacher, whole school leader and DSL. Straight after Easter, we also have Ms Sophie Jones (Teacher of Mathematics) joining us from Princethorpe, bringing her experience as well as Mr Stuart Sweetman (Teacher of Technology) taking over from Mrs Badham. Mr Sweetman is a technology specialist, having previously been Head of Design & Technology at King Henry VIII for many years. Alongside teaching Computer Science, Mr Sweetman is also an expert in electronics, robotics and computer led design. Expect to see lots of Robotics, 3D printing and Game Design added to the curriculum for Reception to Year 9!
We are in the process of transferring over to a new management information system (iSams for anyone who is particularly interested). As part of this process, we are doing a full data update to make sure we have the correct data in place. Please do keep an eye out for our data review sheets which will be issued via DocuSign for your completion. The move to the new system will also incorporate a Parent App to increase access to data and ease communication between home and school so I am very excited to see that begin to take shape.
In the meantime, I hope you all have a lovely weekend despite the forecasted rain.
Best wishes,
David Preston | Headteacher
March 11th 2022
