Newsletters

GHS Connect #33 Monday 14 June

From the Head

There is no way of sugar coating what I have to communicate this week. Obviously, many of you will be aware of the horrific event that took place in Hillingdon on Friday, and I am deeply troubled and saddened to have to tell you that we believe it is one of our students who has been charged with murder over the weekend. I have spent a lot of the weekend trying to put my feelings into words, and I am still very much struggling. All I can say is that for me, this is, by far, the worst thing that has ever happened in my time in education and in my many years at GHS. I cannot begin to imagine how the staff and students are feeling over at the other school, and my thoughts are continually with them.

Obviously, because our student is a minor, their identity must remain protected. It is therefore crucially important that if you do know who the student involved is, you do not mention them by name. For now, the student charged remains innocent until proven guilty and we must protect their anonymity.

Please can I ask you to be mindful of a few things:

> Do not be drawn into discussions about this with students. If you are stuck for what to say, remember it is okay to say you don’t know.

> Please spare a thought for our pastoral teams and SLT this week. They have been upset beyond measure by this turn of events, and spent all of Friday dealing with the fallout.

> Please remember that students who have heard about this are also going to be shocked, confused, pretty worried and will be struggling to process it all.

> We will be doing some work with the year group involved, probably involving our Safer Schools Officer, but we need to get advice over what we are legally allowed to say and do, so please bear with us.

Last Tuesday, when myself and Lou spoke about some of the enormous contextual challenges and safeguarding issues that we were facing outside of school, this provides a very relevant, if extreme example. This student was known to external services but unfortunately, our own concerns about the level of risk attached to this student were not always fully recognised by them. I know that colleagues will be concerned by this so Lou will be giving more information about this in our staff briefing on Wednesday. I’d also like to reassure staff that the school site remains safe and that, on Friday, at no time did the student involved enter school premises.

Please remember that our counsellors are available for staff, should anybody wish to see one. You can find the details on this flyer and Lou also gives more information in her section, below. We also have access to Workplace Options which you can also find information about on the VLE. See our Wellbeing section of the VLE: https://vle.greenford.ealing.sch.uk/wellbeing. 

Mia

Learning and Teaching

Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently…
 
> Naomi Foot using GCSE exam questions with her Y12 class to check their base understanding of a topic before introducing new A-Level content.

> Rola Harb modelling vectors on the board for students; the visual explanation supported them to work through the questions independently. 
 
> Rav Chodha doing a fantastic job while supporting students in Lucy Metcalfe’s English class:

Staff Consultation: Tuesday Meetings and CPD

As mentioned at the whole staff meeting, we are consulting staff on the Tuesday Meeting Schedule and our CPD programme for next year.

We’d really appreciate everyone’s views so if you are a teacher, a member of non-teaching pastoral staff, a TA, HLTA, Achievement Worker or Mentor, could you please answer the very short survey (max five minutes of your time, promise!)  on the link below. We’d like to collect everybody’s thoughts by Friday 18th June. 

Open the survey here (you'll need to be logged in to your Greenford Google account): https://forms.gle/yfo5jywxBrmQDckd9

Thank you!

Kelly McCarthy

Inclusion & Pastoral

Following the news from the end of last week and what Mia has said earlier in this week’s GHS Connect, I am going to keep this very short with key information items:

1) Please remind your tutor groups to sign up to Show My Homework, if they’ve not already done so and remember to find a slot to sign up yourself too, if you still need to;

2) PSHCE this Friday will be RSE across the school - all of the resources are in Google Drive here, so make sure you have a look in advance and ask if there are any questions.

3) And, in relation to that, if anyone would like to come along to the drop in training session on Tuesday in the Lecture Theatre, 4:30 - 5:00, please feel free to;

4) Chelsea’s Choice will be coming back in a couple of weeks to do some work with Year 9 - this is a presentation that looks at the issues of consent, healthy relationships and CSE. More details will follow soon; 

5) At the Wellbeing Meeting last week, we talked about professional support for staff, at what is a very tough time, for all sorts of reasons - please remember that Tash, Jo, our school counsellors available on scp@greenford.ealing.sch.uk, Michelle, our school social worker, available on  mwilliams@greenford.ealing.sch.uk, and Scott, our Behaviour and Inclusion Consultant, are also there to work with staff as well as students.

Have a good week, everyone!

Lou Grimley

Character strengths at GHS

Over the last few weeks, we have been saying goodbye to both our year 11 and year 13 students. 

When attending the year 13 final assembly, many students were being awarded certificates for what they’ve achieved over the last two years but also a chance for teachers to celebrate their character strengths. One of my favourite moments was watching Mary (one of our cleaners) present year 13 with 300 ch0colate chip cookies. She had baked them as a thank you for showing her great kindness.

Although many have been saying goodbye to year 11 in their own way, Jen Williams wrote each of her year 11s a personal postcard praising their accomplishment over the last two years, recognising their courage, responsibility and resilience. 

After Lou’s assembly on respecting diversity, can you use our Character Strengths  - to praise students or engage in meaningful conversation -  in order to reinforce her important messages?

Courage: standing up for what’s right.
> Be brave. 
> Be yourself.
> Have pride.

Community: Building connections with others to create an environment where everyone belongs. 
> Show respect. 
> Listen to others.
> Smile at peers and teachers.

Compassion: caring for others, treating them with kindness. 
> Put yourself in other people’s shoes.
> Be kind.
> Encourage others.

Many thanks, 

Andrea and Noble