With love to Ukraine About ten years ago I visited Kharkiv in Ukraine as the lead practitioner on a study visit for teachers from secondary schools. The visit took place in our Easter holiday and Ukraine was very cold with lying snow, but we quickly developed a deep affection for our host city and its […]
Read more
Learning to tie shoelaces: threats to a love of learning Do you remember who taught you to tie your shoelaces? And when? I do, vividly, even though it was well over sixty years ago. I learned the art aged 5 during my first week at primary school. Noticing my loose attire a girl in the […]
Read more
A Month in Another World Trapped inside a body that is weak. Unable to get up and move around independently. A very private person forced into intimate connection with another. Dependent. Many memories erased; photos holding no meaning; names having no significance. What were once fun moments when a partner would play the piano are […]
Read more
The four Ps: my personal credo Sixteen years ago I was at the central police station in Muscat where I was working. No, I hadn’t broken any rules. I was getting clearance to change jobs. I had had to take time off work to go down there in working hours. The officer who took my […]
Read more
Reflections on Perspective I bought too many groceries for my refrigerator Forgot my gardener’s name, I’ll have to ask him later (from First World Problems by Weird Al Yankovic) Sometimes life feels like a roller-coaster: one minute you are high up at the top and the next the world seems to have come crashing down […]
Read more
It’s clearly not cricket I am proud to live in Yorkshire. Sadly, I can’t describe myself as a Yorkshirewoman as I’ve only been here for 20 years and am still considered, in local parlance, an ‘offcumden’ but I love Yorkshire and it has done much to love me back. The county has a population larger […]
Read more
World Values Day in a time of Pandemic 21 October 2021 – a Day to Reconnect All around the world, from dawn to dusk this 21st October, there will be a global valuethon of people coming together to share, explore, experiment with the extraordinary power of values. For the organisers it will be a marathon, […]
Read more
Control + Alt + Delete: Rebooting School Leadership If you were a student or professional in the first decade of the new millennium, you would quite likely have used a Windows PC to perform computer related activities. From my personal experience, there were numerous times as I worked on a particular piece of work on […]
Read more
World Peace Day I first came across World Peace Day when Sally Burns mentioned it during one of our weekly meetings. As a university student studying political science, I was a bit confused by this concept at first– countless wars are occurring on this planet at any one time, it seemed absurd that people should […]
Read more
Living in Fear Have you ever whinged about the speed of your internet? Have you ever complained that the supermarket had run out of your favourite brand of coffee? Have you ever bemoaned the fact that you couldn’t go on holiday because of the pandemic? Have you ever, like “Weird Al” Yankovic (2014), “bought too […]
Read more
‘Lose Your Shoes……’ Being a summer-born baby, I am biased about the season of warmth, long days and growth. Summer is, to me, nature’s way of ‘showing its beauty’ – a ‘showcase’ of sorts. The abundance of crops, vegetables, flowers, weeds – everything is lush and bountiful, bathed in light with long days and – […]
Read more
World Population Day 11 July 2021 is World Population Day, an important date globally but perhaps one that is not as well-known as it should be, given the gravity of the situation in terms of world population growth and its implication for all our lives on earth. In 1989, Five Billion Day acknowledged the rapid […]
Read more