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A Good Plan
The quote in the header image is one of my all-time favourites from philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who lived between 1813 and 1855. Surely such a comment – being made over 150 years ago – has no relevance whatsoever now?
One of the last times that I met with Valley Park’s senior team in person was Wednesday 18 March. We were having “a bit of a week,” with staffing becoming difficult owing to those having to self-isolate, and with student attendance falling for the same reason. The previous day, I had had to take the disappointing decision to operate a system of partial closure for some year groups because I couldn’t staff the school safely so we were starting to get a sense that perhaps we were heading for an early start to the Easter holiday.
In fact, we knew the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, would be speaking to the nation at 5.00pm – we were watching the BBC website and were ready to pause our meeting to watch. The primary focus of our conversation was how we were going to support Year 11 and Year 13 with their revision if they had a couple of weeks off school before the Easter break. It was going to be difficult, we said, but we had a plan. How would we make sure all our students had lessons without coming into school and without – shock, horror! – being sat at their desks in front of us? It was going to be challenging, we said, but again we had a plan.
I love a good plan! It’s always reassuring when you have a plan. Yes, I’m one of those irritatingly organised people who starts buying next year’s Christmas presents on January 1st.
Mr Johnson took to the podium, Mr Whatley made us another cup of coffee, Mr Fuller helped himself to another Kit Kat – and our plan promptly fell apart!
Schools all closing on Monday. Exams all cancelled. How were our students and their families going to be taking this news? So many questions. No immediate answers.
No real plan.
I shared this Charlie Mackesy image with staff shortly afterwards. He has become somewhat of a social media hero for his “thank you” images and messages of gratitude to NHS workers recently but, back then, it was just a relevant image from an inspirational book I just happened to have finished reading.
And, sure enough, we took a few tentative steps – then a few more – and the mist cleared little by little. What was that before us? Yes, a new plan.
Mr Sargent and Mr Smith have challenged the Upper School and the Sixth Form recently to think about writing letters to themselves. Mr Smith asked students to think about what their year-ago self would have written to their present-day self.
Mr Sargent, conversely, today asked students to think about writing a letter to their year-ago self.
It was their letter-writing ideas that made me think of the quote at the top of the blog. What would I write?
My year-ago self didn’t know she was going to be a headteacher in a few months’ time and would have probably written a very detailed letter outlining The Plan of what she should do next year, and exactly when, in order to be organised. A letter that would have been completely useless by mid-July 2019…
My present-day self would write back and say something like:
“You won’t be needing much of The Plan! You’re going to learn very soon that The Grand Plan is to regularly adapt, constantly evolve, and continually learn from the mistakes that are made. Don’t stop planning of course – but do understand that there is no end to the process; small steps will help you to make progress even after the biggest shocks.”
11 weeks into lockdown (11 weeks!) and here we are. I’m writing a new plan now – this time to welcome our Year 10 and Year 12 students back into school for some small group tutorials. Has that disrupted the current status quo? Yes it has – but what a welcome disruption! Is it going to be easy? No. Will it be worth it? My goodness, yes!
What will you have learned from your experience? I would love to hear about it…
