As I write this piece, the school year has finished and staff are on the last of their two professional days before their summer break begins. I have just taken a moment to read back through the last edition of the Littleport Life and I see Rev’d Howard opened his article with the hope that by the time we are reading it, the lockdown will have ended…well ‘ended’ it hasn’t, but things are different now. I can’t quite believe that vocabulary such as ‘lockdown, ‘social distancing’ and ‘bubbles’ (within the context of schools) have become part of our everyday vocabulary.
Our children and parents have been amazing! I can’t imagine what it must have been like for parents who found themselves having to work from home whilst also supporting their children with home learning, what a challenge and for such a long time! Parents have been giving their children some wonderful opportunities whether engaging with the learning set by school, or gardening, cooking, going for walks and bike rides, making models, the list is endless. As lockdown was beginning to ease, we welcomed back our Year 1 children and then Year 6 during the last week of the term; along with our groups of children of critical workers, it meant we had about a third of our children back in school. Their resilience was amazing and they took all the changes in their stride. When I asked the Year 6 children if they had been worried about coming back to school, I was imagining it would be about catching Covid…. but not at all! Any concerns they had were about their friends deciding to remain at home, so they then wouldn’t see them in school! I think that puts a good perspective on things.
This summer we say good-bye to Ms Rudkin, who has been with us for the first 2 years of her teaching career. She is a super teacher and it has been a joy working with her. We wish her well as she relocates back to her home county to be nearer family and friends. In September we welcome Ms Blythe as a reception teacher, Ms Newman to teach in key stage 2, Ms Clough to be our specialist music teacher and Ms Sampson as our Family Support Adviser. They will join us as we all return to the more ‘normal’ schooling that we all prefer and love, albeit with a few adjustments.
I have included some photos of children doing a range of lovely things which don’t seem very different from the sorts of things that children have always done.