Thank you for taking the time to write this, we are about to take on the serious responsibility of helping London Primary schools with branding, a necessary but sometimes seen as a begrudging task mainly because of all the things you have talked about. Your article has radically changed how we will approach these head teachers - thankyou 👍🙂🫶
This is a wonderful piece Jonathan. My wife retires as primary head teacher today and your words express exactly what it takes to be a leader of a school. Each day they have to deal with a huge range of issues and challenges and the toll can be tremendous in terms of stress and exhaustion. But the rewards are enormous in terms of job satisfaction and the opportunity to inspire children to discover their gifts across the whole spectrum of life. Let's recognise that head teachers and the teachers they lead create the foundation for a successful, happy and healthy society.
After a decade of driving the bus and taking minutes for a dozen school boards here, I share your appreciation for what teachers deal with. I also have an observation in a slightly different context, which you touch on at the outset: a child's world tends to get constructed in encounters with questions, with a built-in assumption that there is an answer to be found, a right answer, one that's not implicit, but explicitly the final answer; and this tends to obscure another aspect of questions, dwelling in them for their own sake. We end up building a world of answers, most of which have never really been examined, and many of which are answers to some other question. A crude example: "A Woman's Place Is In The Home." Nobody ever asked where a woman's place was: they asked why women could not vote. We seem to regard answers as stepping-stones across difficult terrain, to be ticked off efficiently, petrifying the very sky.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, we are about to take on the serious responsibility of helping London Primary schools with branding, a necessary but sometimes seen as a begrudging task mainly because of all the things you have talked about. Your article has radically changed how we will approach these head teachers - thankyou 👍🙂🫶
Thank you Rich. That's good to hear!
This is a wonderful piece Jonathan. My wife retires as primary head teacher today and your words express exactly what it takes to be a leader of a school. Each day they have to deal with a huge range of issues and challenges and the toll can be tremendous in terms of stress and exhaustion. But the rewards are enormous in terms of job satisfaction and the opportunity to inspire children to discover their gifts across the whole spectrum of life. Let's recognise that head teachers and the teachers they lead create the foundation for a successful, happy and healthy society.
Thanks Peter. I was hoping it might reach other people who know headteachers and headteachers themselves...J
After a decade of driving the bus and taking minutes for a dozen school boards here, I share your appreciation for what teachers deal with. I also have an observation in a slightly different context, which you touch on at the outset: a child's world tends to get constructed in encounters with questions, with a built-in assumption that there is an answer to be found, a right answer, one that's not implicit, but explicitly the final answer; and this tends to obscure another aspect of questions, dwelling in them for their own sake. We end up building a world of answers, most of which have never really been examined, and many of which are answers to some other question. A crude example: "A Woman's Place Is In The Home." Nobody ever asked where a woman's place was: they asked why women could not vote. We seem to regard answers as stepping-stones across difficult terrain, to be ticked off efficiently, petrifying the very sky.