News from Mr Grady
Hello Everyone,
Firstly, it is lovely to be able to write to you all again, after a short period of absence. I have read with pleasure Mrs Grimes' newsletters and daily updates and I'd like to thank her and everyone on the staff who have supported the continued success and growth of RHS in my absence. Tiny thanks for an enormous amount of work!
I've had the benefit in the past couple of weeks of some time to think, which has led to brief flashes of perspective. I sometimes use the phrase with colleagues that in education, it is sometimes difficult to "get your head over the parapet" by which I mean, take time to look up from what you're doing to see the bigger picture.
I suspect we have all, in dealing with the daily challenges in front of us barely had a chance to look up at our direction of travel, and certainly as further guidance is given not just to schools, but to businesses, individuals, and communities, we are all starting to hopefully, get a chance to "look up."
As we approach the end of term, I think it's vital for our own well-being to think about how we might "wind-down" towards 17th July. I don't mean simply stopping work early, or giving up on things, but starting to think now about how you might make the mental shift from daily activity and school work to a sustained period without it - what sort of things might you like to do? What might some of your concerns be about a period of time without quite so much external stimulus? How might you manage that?
I've used running analogies ALOT in these pages, but you will see that no athlete gets to the end of their race and stops immediate on crossing the finish line. They cool down, they let themselves run on slightly, they are already thinking and ensuring that their movement out of the event is as positive and supportive as their preparation for it, because they know that how they stop from one event will ensure they start even more positively for the next. I found it bizarre that in all the training manuals I read about running a marathon, one of the key things common to all of them was that the day after your event, you should do a short (no more than a couple of miles) recovery run, the key thing being in a system that is used to a lot of exercise, simply stopping is not helpful when you want to restart!
For some of us a few weeks of unstructured calm might sound like a wonderfully positive thing, for others, they might look at that time with some trepidation, so now is the time to think about how you will use it positively for your own rest, recuperation and recharging, to put a little structure in place if you know it will help, so that a sudden stop on 17th July does not hamper your restart when when we get to September.
I hope everyone is staying well and safe,
Best wishes,
Mr Grady