Welcome to family, friends and visitors. Here you will find interesting (hopefully) pictures of my part of the world, news of our household and probably, long ramblings about anything that catches my interest.

Monday 1 September 2008

Dismal Days.

Yesterday, sunshine and showers.


Monsoon like conditions at mid-day today.
Matches my mood after coming home from the start of year staff meeting. I went in quite a relaxed mood as this term as I'll only be teaching part-time. Then we were told that a colleague in a nearby school died unexpectedly a few days ago, the father (39) of one of our families, who had a stroke just before the holidays, died leaving 3 young children , one of my last year's children has just been diagnosed with leukemia and the prognosis is very poor and another child will be joining us whose father has been battling cancer for 3 years and is about to have more major surgery. Other families are having desperate personal difficulties. And these are just the things that we know about. Our very caring Head emphasised that we should be focusing on getting to know our children and nurturing them before worrying about ticking government boxes. We have a couple of years' breathing space before the inspectors are due, as we had an Ofsted last December.
Sorry to write such a depressing post but these things are filling my head at the moment. Now is the time to give myself a kick in the butt and count all the blessings that God has given me and my family, no life threatening illnesses, many friends to talk to and a vision of the road ahead.
"Even in darkness there is light."



2 comments:

Catching the Magic said...

Oh dear Ruta, it's with great sadness I read this post.

My dear mother has recently retired from being a primary school teacher for most of her adult life. I spent many evening's around the family dinner table hearing sad tales (and a lot of hilarious tales to balance them out with).

She found the pressure from the government with ridiculous amounts of paper work etc. so frustrating.

If only the pressures weren't so heavily bent on league tables and more balanced out with the human side.

I'm so pleased you have such a caring Head and really wish you all every strength in the challenges ahead.

Best wishes, Sarah

www.chezlee.co.nz

Marrisa said...

Its a very difficult thing life. We all so very easily take it for granted. When we hear of scary news we always have time of reflection and promises of the future, but still very rarely change.

I hope the outcome for all these people is a postive one, and I hope you have managed to work through this in your head too. xx