What do Harvest Festival, a petrol shortage, and languages challenge week have in common? My answer is: community. Throughout this week I have been thinking about our school community and St Christopher’s place in the community.
At St Christopher’s our children are part of a warm, vibrant, diverse community. This week, our focus on languages during Languages Challenge Week encouraged children to look beyond our school community. As famous filmmaker Federico Fellini said, ‘A different language is a different vision of life’. This week, as teachers wove languages into their lessons, children were given a glimpse of that different vision of life. At a time when our options for travel have been limited for almost two years, I feel this is especially important and it reminds us that we are part of a wider world.
Within our school community, as news of a petrol shortage reached us, many of us made adjustments to our travel and transport. I know that within our community, families and staff formed ride shares, dusted off bicycles and scooters, and shared information on WhatsApp about the length of queues at different petrol stations. Our school community worked together to help each other, which is exactly the kind of community we all want to be part of. Of course, saving fuel in this way benefitted us as individuals, but I am positive our actions to conserve fuel benefited the wider community as well.
This week we also had our virtual Harvest Festival. This time of year is all about community and sharing a bountiful harvest. In my short address to the children I asked them to think about how they can help others. I have been delighted with their responses! A recording of the Harvest Festival Assembly has been shared with you.
October is Black History Month and teachers will be talking to children in lessons and highlighting the contributions of Black people that were often overlooked throughout history.