Open letter to Sir Desmond Swayne MP

Dear Sir Desmond, 

I hope this email finds you well. I imagine you have had a fairly long and intense day.

Along with so many of my fellow citizens, I have awaited with a mixture of fascination and horror the outcome of the Sue Gray investigation. 

I have watched a succession of front and backbench MPs do more media time over the past 2 weeks than they have granted to the BBC or Channel 4 News for 2 *years*, to parrot the same tired lines their leader has proffered at the Dispatch Box for the last 2 sessions of PMQs: “we must await the outcome of Sue Gray’s report”… and so on… only for the can to be kicked yet further down the road by the sudden advent of a *police* investigation. (Which, to be fair, many of us have been demanding for a *long* time.)

And so to today’s Prime Ministerial Statement, and the sorry spectacle of the ensuing series of responses. You cannot have found it comfortable to sit immediately behind a previous Prime Minister, and to hear her call into question whether Mr Johnson either didn’t *understand* the rules he had told us about at so many covid briefings, or had believed himself to be *exempt*.

I wonder how you reacted to the sight of the Westminster SNP leader being forced to leave the Chamber for speaking the truth, on the basis of an outdated parliamentary tradition whose very foundation has been trampled under the repeated lies of the current Prime Minister.

As you can tell, I am furious at the parlous, pitiable state to which our country has been brought. And I am not even *mentioning* the B word, you will note (although the lies told in the build-up to the 2016 Referendum are the none-too distant cousins of the lies told to attempt to cover up the worst excesses of “PartyGate”…).

And so this brings me to the actual purpose of my latest email to you.

As my elected representative, please look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly believe the country to be in safe hands, under its current leader. You are a military man. You understand and appreciate qualities such as honour, integrity, selflessness and honesty…

I feel certain that you believe you can find these, and the other Nolan Principles, elsewhere within the ranks of your own parliamentary party. I can only pray that you are right, until such time as another party finds itself on the benches where you currently sit.

In the meantime, please examine your conscience, and your inbox, and do the right thing by the country, your constituents and (in the long run) your party. If you have not already done so, send your letter to Sir Graham… please. Tomorrow.

With my very best wishes,

Alex Bellars

Buzzing!

Very exciting news in school today… after consultation with the Leadership Team and having sought the support of the parent body, the Ballard Eco Ambassadors have been given permission to begin our Beekeeping Project! Really fantastic, and definitely something to add to our bid for Green Flag status over the next few months.

My plan is to document the whole process from Day 1… and everything kicks off properly this Friday when we are lucky to have a keen and experienced apiarist coming into school to talk to us about how to get started, and very importantly to help us decide where to site our hive(s). I’m also going to get the kids blogging and vlogging along the way.

So… watch this space! Bee seeing you soon…

#Nurture1819

Once again, it’s time to make a round-up of things that happened in 2018 that I am happy about, and then choose others I am looking forward to in 2019.

Firstly, looking back, what did I have to say about 2018 this time last year?

“On a “big picture” scale, it’s a little tricky to express ones hopes for the new year, so unpredictable has the last 12 months been. It’s tempting to throw ones hands in the air and say that, when those in positions of power are displaying such apparent disregard for good sense and the lives of their fellow human beings, what can we “ordinary folk” hope to achieve in our day-to-day travails…

And yet I am choosing to apply those well-known words of Mother Theresa: “We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” And in conjunction with this, a recent tweet from @RogersHistory: “Staying in the same school as a classroom teacher isn’t lack of ambition if your ambition is to help students achieve theirs.” My fundamental aim for 2018, come what may on the global and national front, is to try and apply both of these in equal measure.”

Well, I hope I can say that, on both sides of this equation, I’ve managed to hold to my two intentions for the year. And I’ll keep trying to do so as we embark on another New Year…

Due to the untimely death of my wife’s horse in the buildup to the event, CampEDSouth didn’t take place this year, but I’m already looking forward to renewing old friendships and forging new ones at the main event’s newest edition in the Spring half-term.

Having not seen much of each other for some time, I renewed contact with my best man and his family this year. It’s amazing to see his kids develop into such flourishing young people. We were at Twickenham for England v Japan in the Autumn Internationals, and as Chris’s wife Mako is Japanese, it was great that it was such a tight game (although a bit too close for my liking, for most of the match!) Plans are afoot to get together with the other 3 from our final year uni house in 2019, for the first time since graduation…

I took my foot off the gas as far as amdram was concerned this year, only taking part in one of the three Lymington Players plays… But it was the title role in our production of “Zack”. Great fun, especially the final scene (having my bushy fake beard “shaved” off on stage!) The next show is Shaw’s “Doctor’s Dilemma”, and I’ve been sent a script by the director, so hopefully I’ll get a part…

I’ve carried on playing hockey regularly, with occasional knee-related mishaps…

Our third annual Ballard Beavers hockey tour was a resounding success. Up to this point, in two years of trying we had yet to secure a win… But on a windswept Plymouth Saturday, in horizontal rain, we drew against a very good women’s club side… before going one better on the Sunday. Two freak injuries (one of which required the hospitalisation of their midfield general) have not prevented us being invited back again in 2019, we trust…

After lots of really hard work from my little Eco-Ambassadors and co-conspirator colleagues, Ballard earned its Bronze Eco-School Silver Award in the same week the school received its Inspection report: Excellent and Outstanding in every area, from EYFS to KS4. Wowsers…

Movember was my most successful thus far, both in terms of money raised and hirsuteness…

This time last year, I said I would continue to fight wherever I could against the enormous national disaster that Brexit represents. When I tweeted #iremainhopeful back then, it was more out of a sense of bloody-minded bravado than anything else. But now, with the prospect of a People’s Vote seeming less and less unlikely, I truly feel that 2019 can be the year we come together around a reexamination of the UK’s place within a wider EU, rather than stepping off a cliff into the political abyss. We shall see, eh?

Sailability duties down at Blashford Lake occupied much of my summer holiday again, as it will do once more next year. Such a fantastic way to spend the days… If you’re considering volunteering over the Summer, I heartily recommend it.

And so the year draws to a close… with one major ambition ticked off the list: being Twitter-liked by Luke Skywalker.

The Force is strong in this one… 😉

Corridors of uncertainty

I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking about this half-term’s #EduTwitter “debate” topic, and my feelings about it all can be summarised in this way. Although not in any particular order. Which may or may not be some sort of metaphor.

A school’s corridors are just one part of the whole.

Learning how to navigate them is a vital skill. Which can be practised and taught, as I do in PSHE sometimes with the Y9 team of which I am part.

Education is not just about what happens in the classroom, in between 8.50 and 9.35, but about all the little interactions which take place in other times too. Including break times and lunchtimes, but not exclusively these.

Schools must, of course, ensure that their corridors – and all their other spaces – are safe for its pupils and staff. But there are ways to do this which stop short of utter silence.

Is clamping down on corridor chat symptomatic of a lack of trust between adults and children? This trust needs to be established, cherished, rebuilt if necessary… but not eroded by removing opportunities to test it. Pupils need to have opportunities to show that they can behave when nobody is watching (that they know of).

If the only way to eliminate bullying in between lessons is to remove any and all communication, I suspect there is probably something more fundamental which requires attention, to be frank.

That’s what I think. And although I respect others’ right to mute me when I express these opinions on Twitter, perhaps that is turning the litmus paper a similar colour to when the corridors fall silent…?

BallardEco – the story so far and a look to the future…

On Ballard School’s pathway along the road to Green Flag status (and beyond!), the last week has been a very significant one…

To recap the school’s “eco-journey” so far: when the first project began back in the early 2000s, with the renovation of the long-neglected Watergardens, the brains behind the operation was Geography teacher Paul Craven, assisted by a small but enthusiastic groups of Lower and Upper Prep pupils and a bit of brawn from yours truly. It was Paul who secured the National Lottery “People’s Places” funding which paid for the fencing and paving materials, as well as the decking which has sadly now perished. We hired in a JCB driver to help dredge the swamp, but the job of clearing the forest of bamboo which infested the pond was carried out with sheer muscle-power and determination – supplemented occasionally by the odd parent or grandparent, on Saturday mornings fuelled by barbecues and donuts… Pupils learned to use gardening tools safely, and how to plant, prune and provide for all sorts of flora; they found out about composting, mulching, fence and decking maintenance; care of the protected newts, frogs, toads and myriad insects which make the pond their home… The range of learning has been extraordinary, especially with the addition of Miss Travis to the staff team, who was able to bring her Lower Prep expertise to the project.

It was clear that there was the appetite to widen the scope of the project, and so the Eco-Warriors, as the team had become known, designed and built “Buggingham Palace”, a multi-layered habitat for insects, over the drive from the pond, and even dreamed over creating a “woodland nature walk” path through the woods between the school drives.

With Paul’s retirement, initially Ballard Eco took a moment to tread water, before a new impetus. Initially slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the task in managing the Watergardens, Miss Travis and I were granted the incalculable support and help of the Maintenance Team, whose work around the grounds as a whole has been little short of incredible.

Then we became aware of the Eco-Schools programme, and decided to get involved.

Eco-Schools is a global programme, engaging millions of children across 67 countries. It came into being after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and has gradually gathered pace over the past 20+ years, empowering children to drive change and improving their environmental awareness – and hopefully that of their parents – through hands-on, real-world learning.

As you will hopefully already know, the now re-named “Eco-Ambassadors”, still with its core of Y3-Y8 pupils, first carried out an Environmental Review of the school, across 9 key areas such as Waste & Recycling and Energy Usage. We then drew up an Action Plan of ways in which Ballard could improve in these areas.

Over the past two years we have been monitoring and evaluating our progress, introducing concrete improvements (such as the banning of polystyrene cups from school). We have taken part in national “Citizen Science” research programmes such as “What’s Under Your Feet?” – an attempt to find out why some species of UK birds are in decline by gathering data on the insects and larvae which form a large part of their diet. We have spearheaded the school’s participation in nationwide campaigns such as “Switch Off Fortnight” and last week’s “Waste Week 2018”. In conjunction with the Catering Department and the School Council, we have carried out an experiment to introduce healthier snack options, to cut down on biscuit consumption at break-times. And throughout the process we have sought to inform and involve the wider school community in our work, as it is crucial that all are made more aware of the need to be more environmentally-minded, not just a small but highly enthusiastic group.

So last week represents, I hope, a real watershed in the life of Ballard Eco: a national campaign called “Great British Spring Clean” was timed to coincide with Waste Week, with schools and other groups and communities invited to do their bit to clear up litter in their area. This was a great opportunity to involve a far larger group of pupils than the core Eco-Ambassadors, and get them “thinking and acting Eco”, so the “Great Ballard Spring Clean” came into being!

Ballard’s communal effort saw a large proportion of the school step up to the plate. All the pupils from Lower Prep enthusiastically combed the school site for litter in a House competition; more than 60 volunteers from Y6-8, plus the Y10 House Captains, braved drizzle and soggy underfoot conditions to scour the perimeter of the school; finally the Y9 students not taking part in the WWI Battlefields Trip enthusiastically foraged through the area near Ballard Lake. They then wrote a report of what they found – in English, French, Spanish and German!

Additionally, and entirely independently, recent form assemblies led by Years 1 and 2 and, at the other end of the age-range, a Y9 form group have tackled the very topical issue of plastic in the environment, utterly unprompted by the Eco-Committee.

All-in-all, I am confident that the message is starting to seep into more and more pupils’ consciousnesses, and from there into their daily actions.

The school has progressed in relatively short order from a Bronze to a Silver Award, and with all that we have already achieved in the weeks since we announced the latter, we are clearly well on our way to the top level on the ladder: a Green Flag. Over 18,000 schools in the UK are registered as Eco-Schools… but only just over 1,000 have a Green Flag, so when we do get there, if will be a stellar achievement indeed. Watch this space – and follow the new @BallardEco account on Twitter to see how we are progressing!

Bev Evans – Purple Plaque

Nominations are being accepted in Wales for “Purple Plaques”. Started on International Women’s Day in 2017, the campaign aims to celebrate the lives of remarkable Welsh women.

A group of friends got together and suggested that we nominate our beloved Bev Evans, who passed away after a short, cruelly sudden illness in 2014. It still seems like yesterday, to be honest, and she was such a vibrant presence in our lives that she has never really left us, really.

Anyway, I felt like sharing the text of my nomination on here, so here it is:

“I would like to nominate Bev Evans for a Purple Plaque.

Bev passed away in 2014, at the cruelly young age of 46, but by that time the resources she had created and shared online had been downloaded all over the globe countless millions of times by who-knows-how-many educators, all of whom owe her a fantastic debt.

Bev was the TES SEND “guru”, though she’d have guffawed at the thought of being called anything so grandiose. Above all she was an infectious, inclusive, inspirational person, who advanced the cause of teaching and learning for ALL, not just special needs pupils.

I first met her face-to-face at the inaugural CampED event – a sort of “unconference” in a freezing field in Yorkshire, though it felt like I’d already known her for yonks, and my abiding memory of her is the impromptu “jam session/singalong” on the Saturday night, where Bev’s wonderful voice was a real high point.

We also discovered that she knew and had worked with my great-aunt back in her days as a community artist in Pembrokeshire.

I also recall her holding a large and increasingly raucous hall full of techy teachers in the palm of her hand at the BETT Teachmeet, when she bravely did a live demo of one of her resource creation techniques (against the clock!).

She was and remains an utter legend, and she is still sadly missed. Please consider her for a plaque, perhaps in her hometown of Pembroke Dock.”

I do hope the Purple Plaque People will consider the nomination – and I know many other people will be advocating Bev for one.

Don’t Look At The Train!

In my dealings with a panicky pupil today, I was reminded of an allegorical story I was told when I was a recently-qualified teacher. As those who have read some of my previous posts will know, I have faced my share of mental health issues over the years, and early in my teaching career I was experiencing heightened anxiety and panic attacks.

As I sat in his kitchen with my teacher mentor, a wonderfully wise, gentle man called Bernie Robson, who is sadly no longer with us, he asked me to close my eyes and painted the following picture:

“Along an arrow-straight length of track, a mighty goods train is thundering towards you. In front of you, struggling against their bonds, lies a prisoner roped to the rails. The train driver has seen the impending disaster, and has applied the brakes… but with the weight of wagons behind it, the engine has no chance of stopping in time. It will plough headlong over you and the stricken prisoner in precisely 45 seconds.

The ropes are tied in 8 sturdy but simple knots. Each will take 5 seconds to loosen. So if you retain your composure and focus, untying each knot with single-minded sang-froid, you will have 5 seconds left over to drag the prisoner to safety… The key message, therefore?

DON’T LOOK AT THE TRAIN!”

Bernie appreciated, of course, that when your mind is playing tricks on you and refuses to allow you the calm and control required to negotiate even the apparently simplest of mundane tasks, such a message is easier said than done.

But I’ve never forgotten it, or him. And at times like this afternoon, when I pass it on to others, I hope it helps them too.

Mug shot

Perhaps like me you watched the recent “Blue Planet 2” series in ashamed dismay at our species’ ability to sully the natural environment with plastics and other waste – and in particular the disastrous way in which plastic is finding its way into the water column, and the food chain…

But maybe you also found the final episode as inspirational as I did, showing as it did people around the world seeking to reverse these negative effects. Uniquely among the planet’s inhabitants we have the understanding and the resources to do something about these effects. The will to do so is the key ingredient – apparently missing among some of our political leaders…

But not amongst the Ballard School Eco-Ambassadors! Alongside our various other school-wide campaigns, we had targeted staff use of polystyrene cups for some time. The staffroom in the school’s old main building, unfortunately, does not allow for the plumbing-in of a sink or dishwasher. Although it is certainly not beyond the wit of man to use one’s own mug and wash it up somewhere else, as and when needed, this is obviously not ideal in the hurly-burly of a busy teaching day. The school had been supplying unrecyclable polystyrene cups for some time.

It was deemed unwise to try and and wean our colleagues off their use of these whilst we awaited our impending school inspection – none of us really fancied getting lynched by frazzled friends! But once this was out of the way, before Christmas, the way was clear…

And so at the start of this term, we finally asked the Catering Manager to cancel all future orders of polystyrene cups. Instead, an order for 100 new white china mugs was made. Staff still needed the final push into accepting these, and so with my fellow Eco-Ambassador colleagues Jim and Emma, we have pledged to relay trays of clean and dirty mugs up and down from the staffroom to kitchen as and when necessary, so staff don’t need to worry about washing them themselves. Eventually we hope others will join in with the fetching and carrying… The pupil Eco-Committee has also created a staff scoreboard, which will show when staff are seen using mugs or the dwindling remaining supply of polystyrene cups. A nice combination of carrot and stick!

Admittedly this is all (if you’ll excuse the expression) just a drop in the ocean. But it feels good to have struck a blow for our environment.

#nurture1718

Well, I have been doing these “turn of the year” posts since 2012-13, it would appear (though I haven’t done one every year). Once again, it’s intended to be a round-up of things that happened in 2017 that I am happy about, and then some things I am looking forward to in 2018: here goes with the retrospectives, first (in no particular order)…

Spending a wonderful few days in Normandy with my family to celebrate mum’s 70th – including niecelet and nephling’s very first time abroad…

Maintaining my 100% attendance record at CampED, and holding the 2nd CampEDSouth (including the first ever CampED boat trip…)

Renewing contact with old uni friends with whom I’d been apart for too long (isn’t WhatsApp amazing!)

Getting a flourishing Animation Club going at my school, with purpose-built hand-made stages of my own design.

Taking part in two am-dram productions, one of which required two 20-second total costume changes before rushing back on as utterly different characters…

A fantastic second annual Devon hockey tour with the Ballard Beavers (our ‘parents/staff/various hangers-on’ team).

A wonderful reunion with some old schoolmates – getting ready for next year’s 30th anniversary of our leaving school…

Leading our school’s successful efforts to earn a Bronze Eco-School Award (and being well on the way to Silver!).

Taking part in the March for Europe on 25th March (standing up for democracy with tens of thousands of others just a few days after the Westminster Bridge terror attack). And continuing to fight wherever I can against the enormous national disaster that Brexit represents. #iremainhopeful

A bracing but brilliant “Mary Day” drawing and painting on Hurst Spit with friends and family (inspired by our dear friend Mary de Castro, who I wrote about here.)

Another summer of Sailability volunteering, complete with the Hansa National Championships held at our lake.

LOTS of cycling over the summer, building up to my second participation in the annual Ride the Forest with Jens Voigt, in support of the Epilepsy Society.

And now what about 2018?

On a “big picture” scale, it’s a little tricky to express ones hopes for the new year, so unpredictable has the last 12 months been. It’s tempting to throw ones hands in the air and say that, when those in positions of power are displaying such apparent disregard for good sense and the lives of their fellow human beings, what can we “ordinary folk” hope to achieve in our day-to-day travails…

And yet I am choosing to apply those well-known words of Mother Theresa: “We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” And in conjunction with this, a recent tweet from @RogersHistory: “Staying in the same school as a classroom teacher isn’t lack of ambition if your ambition is to help students achieve theirs.” My fundamental aim for 2018, come what may on the global and national front, is to try and apply both of these in equal measure.

Best wishes for 2018.

 

 

Bon voyage, cher Bernard…

It’s a sad, sad day. I have just heard from my parents that a dear friend of our family, Bernard Brécy, passed away yesterday evening.

Bernard was a truly unique individual, and in spite of all that life had dealt him in terms of trials and travails, he had coped with it in such a quietly resolute, uncomplaining way that he appeared pretty much indestructible.

I wanted to tell what I know of his story, as a mark of respect for a person who I have come to see as all that is most admirable in a human being. In amongst all the sniping, back-biting and unpleasantness that I have read online today, maybe it’s a bit of an antidote to some of the negativity.

We first met Bernard and his family back in 1989, when my parents were embarking on the search for a little place to buy in the Cotentin peninsula area of Normandy – we had fallen in love with this quiet backwater of France on family holidays. Nothing had really ticked all the boxes, so far, though, and so we decided to look up Monsieur et Madame Brécy, friends of friends, and maybe get a cup of tea before continuing the search.

Their imposing manoir de Grainville, located on the edge of the Cotentin marais – a low-lying area flooded by the occupying Germans in the lead up to D-Day, in a bid to prevent landings by airborne troops – made an immediate impression.

But this was as nothing compared with the impression made by Bernard and his indomitable wife Rolande. Rolande was Maire of the village, but also Conseil-Général of the whole département de la Manche, as well as carer for her husband since she first met him after his accident.

As we were to learn, Bernard had been on holiday in Greece in his late teens, and one sunny day, took a dive off the group’s yacht – failing to see the sandbar just beneath the water’s surface. He broke his neck. Fortunately there were people nearby – servicemen I believe – who stopped anyone from trying to move him until the paramedics arrived, just stabilising his head and neck as he floated.

And that was how he met Rolande, who was one of the nurses during his lengthy rehabilitation. They fell in love, and so began a formidable partnership that has lasted until now, and produced two equally wonderful children, and more recently a next generation.

As a result of his accident, Bernard was now tetraplegic. He had no sensation or movement below the shoulders, and his hands were more like claws, with which he could pilot his motorised chair and fill his pipe, and control the PC which was his window on the wider world. But far from being beaten into submission by such a cruel blow at this point in his life, he simply refused to allow his changed circumstances to impede him in any way more than strictly necessary.

During our first meeting that afternoon in 1989, we quickly realised that he was a person of a huge breadth of experience and knowledge – a genuine Renaissance man – with a gently-spoken warmth of spirit and a naughty twinkle in his eye.

After a few cups of tea and an exchange of glances, he and Rolande decided that we had made a decent enough first impression on them that they would divulge the location of a house in the village which had literally only just come into the market… In this way, they were directly responsible for mum and dad finding the house they ended up buying…

Over the next months and years, as we restored “les Cavées”, Bernard’s encyclopedic knowledge of Norman traditions, crafts and architecture were often invaluable, and we came to know his gentle sense of humour. On one occasion, before my mum leaned over to greet him with the usual kiss on each cheek, he held up a hand to say “wait!”, grinned and carefully turned off his motorised chair, as on a previous occasion she had accidentally put him into reverse…

Gradually we learned more about his life story. Together with Rolande – in between her mayoral and councilor duties – they ran the manoir as a chambre d’hôtes, but Bernard also bred horses as well as a herd of beautifully incongruous Highland cattle, over on his marais fields.

But he also yearned to spread his wings wider, and he and Rolande travelled more widely than most other couples I know, criss-crossing South America and the Indian sub-continent to name but two of their favourite destinations. Perhaps most extraordinarily, in a link to the accident which set him on his life’s course, he continued his love for sailing, ultimately buying a strange-looking junk-rigged yacht which had been purpose-built by Herbert “Blondie” Hasler (of “Cockleshell Heroes” fame), and having it converted to allow him to single-hand it around the Breton islands.

He inevitably had his dark days, and the knock-on health effects of his tetraplegia were many and substantial. Through it all, whenever I or any other member of my family wandered down the hill to the manoir for a chin-wag, he was unfailingly hospitable, cheery and delighted to hear how our lives were unfolding. I came to feel the sort tenderness for him that I was never able to share with my grandfathers, who both died long before I was born.

The world is a lesser place for his passing. My thoughts are with Rolande and his family, who will be bereft. Rest in peace, dear Bernard.