News from Mr Grady
Hello Everyone,
As I write the newsletter slightly ahead of the deadline when I can, I had planned, as I knew the Euros were going to be on, to write a football-based newsletter.
However, I’m writing this on Tuesday afternoon, before the game, as I am solidly booked out on Wednesday, and won’t have time to write it for the mid-day deadline. This poses a problem, as the England match has not yet started, and so any wise words of philosophical wisdom drawing comparisons between sports and education may not be appropriate. The only way round this is to write a newsletter where you can “delete as appropriate” depending on the outcome of the game.
Here goes…
I think what’s great about England’s emphatic victory/predictable collapse is that in many ways it brings the country together in shared pride/collective shame as our national team go out there and perform on the international sporting stage.
As our bold, courageous and talented young heroes/inexperienced, naïve and incompetent young upstarts went out there in the face of national expectation, one can only wonder at the sort of pressures they feel they are under. Their own hopes and dreams must feel difficult to focus on, given the noise around them of everyone else’s expectations, when they just want go out there and do their best. At such a time, I can imagine that the drive to protect one’s own interests, to make sure that on the day at least you can say “well I did my bit,” could get in the way of the collective interest. And of course, that is simply not the way to achieve the very highest of heights that you might have set in your heart.
As we could see as England showed just what they were made of/showed just what they were made of it was their work as a team that evident throughout the game. No one player put their own interests ahead of the game, and for better or worse, they won/lost as a team.
What is absolutely key to their future, following their convincing success and progression to the next stage/disappointing loss and rueful journey home is that they continue to learn from their experiences, they grow together as an ensemble, and that in the warm glow of a job well done/cold shower of a poor performance, they know that they can continue to rely on their teammates and their community.
As we bask in the national glory/national ignominy of Tuesday night’s match we will not be doing it on our own, but as a community, and likewise as we approach the end of term, and the start of a new school year, it is with hope that we can reconnect as a whole community, not just in our remote bubbles but more broadly as the whole school, and however we feel about the last year in school, whether we will be approaching the holidays secure in the knowledge of a job well done, or rueful that we could have done a little better, or indeed any number of feelings in between, it is as a community that we will continue to thrive together, picking each other up and supporting as an ensemble when needed, cheering each other’s successes and supporting in harder times.
And we will be all the better for it. And we will be all the better for it
With very best wishes, stay well and safe everyone,
Mr Grady
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