Dear Parents/Carers,
I hope everyone is well and you are all continuing to keep safe. We have finally reached the end of another strange term in school and indeed a strange 12 months in education and the wider society. I have to say it has been a wonderful last week in school as we have marked Holy Week and prepared for Good Friday and the Easter weekend. The weather has been perfect and we have been able to hold our Year Group Masses in church each morning and our sponsored walks for CAFOD each afternoon. On top of that I had a fantastic surprise on Tuesday afternoon. When I returned to school with Year 3 after our walk, it was to a whole school concert in the playground with the children singing and dancing and reminding me what talented pupils we have at St Joseph’s. It was also so good to finally have a whole school event; this is one thing I have really missed in the last year. My sincere thanks for all your gifts, cards and good wishes, I have been truly touched by this. At the end of this newsletter I share some thoughts and memories with you as I prepare to finish my time as Head teacher at St Joseph’s.
Assessments
I have sent home a letter to every child this week. It contains the results of their recent assessments plus a personal message from me. As I said last week, the pupils have done very well in these assessments, particularly considering the disrupted last 12 months in school. If we can have an uninterrupted summer term, I am confident that all the pupils will continue to make good progress and be ready for their new year groups in September, which is the longer term aim.
Covid-19
We ask that you continue to remain vigilant to any symptoms of Coronavirus within members of your household, even when your child is at home. If in doubt, please get yourselves or your child tested. All Waltham Forest residents are able to get tested even if they are not showing any Coronavirus symptoms, as this will reduce the spread of infection to others. If your child or a member of your family tests positive for Coronavirus, you will need to self-isolate as a family for 10 days and inform the school, even if your child is at home or school is closed e.g. weekends or holidays. As we prepare to start the Easter break, I would ask that you report any positive cases to the school up to 6 days into the holiday, so up till Wednesday 7th April. I will be in school next week for the Easter Holiday Scheme so you can let me know on the school number or at school@stjosephsjun.waltham.sch.uk. After the last 12 months we have had, I truly hope that no family has to report a positive case but we still need to work together to keep our community safe and well.
CAFOD Lenten Appeal
As we have done in previous years, we are raising money for CAFOD’s Lenten Appeal over the last few weeks of term. We raised £480 from both Friday’s non-uniform days and cake sales and we have done our “Walks for CAFOD” this week. As was my intention, I have walked every step with the pupils over the 4 days. Thank you for all the sponsor money that has come in this week, you can still donate money over the Easter break and would ask the children to bring this in when we return to school on 20th April. Given how much we have raised so far, I am confident we will exceed our target of £1,000 for CAFOD.
Masses for Holy Week
My thanks to Father Gerry and Father Bijoy for allowing us to celebrate the Holy Week Masses in church this week. Again this was a special way to spend my last week in school and to mark Holy Week.
Easter Holiday Food Scheme (6th-9th April)
We will be running our Easter Holiday Food Scheme during the first week of the holidays from Tuesday 6th to Friday 9th April. This is mainly for pupils who are eligible for Free School Meals and we are hosting it for around 50 pupils from both schools. I will be here to oversee the scheme and my thanks to the staff who are giving up the first week of their well-earned break to run the activities for the children. Again this is something we have a long and proud history of providing at St Joseph’s, so I am very happy that I will still be here for this particular scheme.
End of Term
School finished today for the spring term and will reopen for pupils on Tuesday 20th April at the usual starting times.
As always I wish everyone a lovely weekend with Easter Sunday coming up and a safe couple of weeks ahead. Let’s hope the recent lovely spring weather continues and you can all get to spend time with your families. We know that restrictions are being gradually lifted which is good, but we need to be safe and ensure that we do not return to lockdowns. Again I would like to finish with a special prayer for Holy Week and the Easter break.
Prayer for Holy Week/Easter
Let us put ourselves into the hands of the Lord,
And pray that God will bless us and our families
During the coming holy days.
May each of us help to make our homes
Places of joy, love and peace.
May we be generous and considerate,
Helping others keep the celebration
Of the dying and resurrection
Of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Yours sincerely,
J Alexander (Head teacher)
Final Thoughts
As this is my final full newsletter, I hope you will forgive me by ending it with some thoughts and reflections on my time at St Joseph’s. There isn’t space or time to cover everything, but I want to share some of the most fulfilling and memorable experiences, almost all of which are linked directly or indirectly to the pupils themselves. I cannot believe it was 42 years ago in the autumn of 1979 when I started my teaching career in Coldstream Primary School on the England – Scotland border (safely on the Scottish side of course!). A year later I moved 10 miles up the road to Duns Primary School in the middle of rural Berwickshire in the beautiful Scottish borders, where I enjoyed 6 wonderful years before in April 1987 I decided it was time for a complete change of scenery and moved to Cann Hall Primary School in Leytonstone. Rural Berwickshire to East London was about as big a change as you could make but again I was lucky to spend 6 great years at Cann Hall. Then in April 1993 I had the opportunity to come to St Joseph’s as Deputy Head and the rest as they say is history.
During those 40 odd years I have been fortunate to work with some great head teachers who taught me a lot and gave me the opportunities and responsibility which helped me so much when I finally took on the role myself from 2010. I have also had the privilege to work alongside such a variety of staff who have helped shape the school and make it a place of diversity, learning and pastoral care. I am very proud of giving many teachers and other staff their first job here and then helping them to develop and grow. I would also like to pay tribute to you the parents and the many, many parents who have come before. You have all played a key role in the many successes of St Joseph’s. Never more so than in the last year when you have had to change and adapt your role as parents and become the primary educators of your children for much of this time. Thank you for everything you have done and will continue to do. A special thanks to the many parents who over the years have given up their time to help with things such as the Friends’ Association or volunteered to help out at school events, often continuing to do so even after their children have left the school.
I would also like to pay tribute to all the governors, particularly the various Chairs I have had the pleasure to work with and to get to know very well. As the guardians of our school they play a crucial role in the on-going development of St Josephs. Their role has always been important but never more so than in the last 12 months when they have had to oversee school during the pandemic and manage the move to the federation this term. I would like to thank them for their support in the last year and indeed throughout my term as Head teacher. As you know the new federated governing body has been in place since 1st January and they have worked incredibly hard this term to oversee the transition period and I am confident the school is in good hands moving forward.
Of course St Joseph’s has been much more than a place of work for me. As well as fulfilling the roles of Head teacher, Deputy Head, class teacher and governor among others, I have also been a parent myself and then more recently a grandparent. For 16 out of the last 20 years I have had either one of my sons or one of the eldest grandchildren here as pupils and all flourished and have gone on to greater things in education and life. This is also true for hundreds of other pupils who have attended the school and it always lovely to see how well our ex-pupils are doing.
As I mentioned above it would take too long to list all the things that I have been involved with over the last 28 years. Although our core objective has always been to provide the best possible education for the children, some of the most memorable times have been what I have always called “Learning outside the Classroom”. In this I would include our involvement from 2006 to 2014 in the European Comenius Project. For a small school in Leyton to be in partnership with 6 schools from Austria, Hungary, Norway, Spain, Greece and Turkey was something special and gave me the chance with other staff and pupils to visit such diverse places as Istanbul, Vienna and Larvik. I think the highlight of the entire project was in January 2012 when we hosted around 50 staff and pupils from our 6 partner schools.
2012 was a special year for the school because of the London Olympics and our children having the opportunity to take part in the opening ceremony. I remember attending the rehearsals in the stadium in the weeks before the start of the games and then the opening ceremony itself. I think for the pupils involved it was truly a memory for life and a once in a lifetime opportunity. The legacy of the games has also benefitted the school with the Olympic Park almost being on our doorstep in Stratford. I was also very proud of the school becoming the walking champions of East London twice through the Beat the Street project and our many International Days, Christmas, Easter and Year 6 productions, assemblies etc. all of which have showcased the wonderful range of talents among our children.
When I first joined the school, one of the things I wanted to introduce was outdoor education and again to give our pupils memorable experiences beyond the classroom. Over the years this has included camping at Gilwell Park, residential trips to North Wales and Norfolk plus many trips to the beautiful setting of Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire. I would estimate that around 2,000 pupils have passed through school during my time here and the majority of them will have had some kind of residential experience. There have also been many other day trips etc. too numerous to list here. One of the reasons we have been able to offer these experiences is because the staff have always been willing to give up their time to plan and run the trip, especially the residential trips.
Finally a word about the pupils themselves as they are the reason we do this mad job in the first place. Over the years I have had the great privilege and pleasure to teach and work with some wonderful pupils. I have always seen myself as a teacher who happened to become a Head teacher. I have made a point of timetabling myself each week to do some teaching in school as this is where I feel most comfortable and you never lose that joy of seeing children achieve and improve. One thing which has made this last year special and enjoyable, despite the many interruptions and disruptions to school life, has been the fact that this has probably been the best cohort of pupils we have had here, certainly in my time as Head. Given everything they have had to go through as young learners, they have done remarkably well which is a tribute to their commitment to learning, the great teaching and support they have received in school and your wonderful parenting. It has truly been a partnership between home and school and I am very confident that this generation of children will thrive and achieve great things.
My sincere thanks and best wishes to everyone. This is not an ending or goodbye, it is merely the start of a new chapter in the 120 year history of our special school.
