Our theme for this week was resilience. It has proved to be the perfect one of our attitudes for learning to focus on as we settle into the routine of school life, after all the excitement of the end of summer and start of the school year. Autumn has arrived with a splash and with it some of the daily challenges associated with this change of seasons. For me, the return of the duvet makes getting out of bed a little more challenging, and the darker evenings can impact our mood.
Every day in some small way we all require resilience. It is not always the herculean effort to overcome a great obstacle like George in Year 3 demonstrated during the summer with his mammoth walk or Jasper in Year 4 with his incredible charitable efforts for the homeless. These are remarkable achievements but so too for the child who gets out of the car in the morning despite wishing they were still in bed, the child who tries and tries again when learning proves challenging, the child who picks themself up and carries on when they feel they can’t or don’t want to. These are the everyday challenges that require resilience, and we encourage everyone to take pride in managing them, because it is worth all of us remembering that our track record for getting through difficult days is 100%…
Around the school our resilient squirrels have been busy taking on and overcoming new challenges. Our Year 5 boys enjoyed football success winning the plate competition at Reigate St Mary’s, a great start to the sporting calendar. The same year group have been making us proud with their attitude and behavior at Condover Hall participating in all sorts of activities and adventures on their residential trip. For some of those children the resilience required to scale a 5m climbing wall is nothing compared to the challenge of spending three nights away from home. Both are equally important in helping our children grow and remind us why such trips are so enriching. Thank you to the staff leading this excursion, who have demonstrated their fair share of resilience too, looking after the children so well and spending time away from their own families this week.
We are really looking forward to seeing as many parents as possible at our ‘Academic Achievement at BPS’ parent workshop next Thursday. It will be a very informative and helpful guide to how our children are learning, what we can all do to support them and an opportunity to share and celebrate their superb academic achievements, of which we are very proud. The quality of work I have seen this week has been fantastic in all year groups. Watching our Reception children navigate their way through maths and English with the same enjoyment and enthusiasm as arts, craft and and developing their skills through play is so rewarding. I also enjoyed watching our Nursery children being inspired by Mrs Lane playing the violin in their music session, lucky them. Our eldest children continue to show their leadership qualities and congratulations to the significant group of boys who successfully completed the first stage of the grammar school assessment.
Well done to everyone for their individual moments of resilience this week, you should feel proud of all you are achieving. I will leave you with the very wise words of Winnie the pooh. “Remember you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think!”
