Crew Frank are Back!

By Brandon Burke11th September 2020

After a rather unusual summer off, and Crew nearly being as tall as Mr. Burke now, the return of the students has been nothing but brilliant. The attitude, work ethic, and maturity has impressed me during school. Crew Frank, however, has started off the return by making pledges. Each crew member had time to reflect on Y7’s pledge to the crew and reflect on this. This enabled them to adapt and create new pledges for the start of Y8.

Here we have a beautiful display of each crew member’s pledge.

I really like this pledge that Caitlin Revell for Crew Frank made… ”I pledge to support my crew unconditionally no matter what the situation”. I love this and it just shows what the crew is. The compassion and thought that has gone into this pledge are fantastic.

Although making pledges is a really good way to set goals, it is really hard work to achieve them. This is why in the crew we always refer back to our MEGs and HOWLs, holding each other accountable for pledges we make. As a crew, we have discussed about the importance of motivating each other and picking each other up when we are struggling or feeling down or even given each other a kick to refocus.

WHAT A CREW!!!!

Nothing but Praise for Crew Rowling!

By Natalie Johnson8th September 2020

What a start!

I am super proud of the attitude and commitment to learning Crew Rowling have returned to school with! It has been great to get back together as a Crew following learning from home and the long summer break!

Our return… 

Crew sessions have had a revamp! Although we’re still checking in and catching up about what we have been up to over the weekend/ night before, we’re also getting down to the nitty gritty! Our week in Crew now looks like this:

Each day we have a different focus and it has been lovely to hear more of the quieter members of our Crew getting involved and voicing their opinions too!

Today we considered ‘Why is reading important?’ exploring the effects of illiteracy… none of us are there (thank goodness!) but we now know why we also need to make the most of our AR reading time in sessions. Some of the feedback gathered in our closing circle really highlighted the answer to our mini ‘Guiding Question’ and reflected just how much our Crew has grown (even literally!) over the Summer.

Proof is in the pudding…

It has been really refreshing opening the Dashboard and having supporting evidence that what i’m seeing in Crew is also happening in sessions. Two weeks in and we’ve all picked up at least one praise point, we’ve not missed any homework, we’ve not gained any conduct logs and most importantly… we’re top of the leaderboard! (not that we’re competitive!)

Year 7, who?

This year we’re determined to go bigger and better, making pledges to build on our success from Y7 and send us soaring into Y8… Please hold us to account!

(Due to iPad technical difficulties, please wait in anticipation for Shawn and Layton’s!)

Long may our success and good behaviour continue!

Stay safe, everyone!

Welcome Back Crew!

By H Hickson8th September 2020

WHAT A START TO THE TERM!

Crew have been fantastic in the way they have conducted themselves around school and in their lessons since returning from lockdown/summer. I’m proud of how they have matured, grown in their characters and come back stronger!

I was so happy when we all returned on our Crew Day on the first day back to discuss our experiences over summer and lockdown, have a catch up and explore the impacts the pandemic has had on our lives and society.

Since then it’s been full on back into lessons. It’s lovely to see Crew building relationships with their new teachers and hearing all the exciting expeditions that they are starting. From what I’ve seen and heard they have been working so hard during their sessions and have really stepped it up now they’re in Year 9 – I can’t wait for all the exciting new experiences they will have this year, from Passage, to Duke of Edinburgh Bronze and their GCSE choice option. We’ve got a great year ahead!

Here they all are looking so much more grown up!  (and thrilled at having their photo taken)

 

Reflections on our return

6th September 2020D Pearson

It’s been absolutely brilliant to see Crew Young return to school with such a focused start to their year 10 after months in lock-down! Last week we watched a video that showed the origins of XP School, and how the first year group set the bar……it’s fair to say that at XP East our “Youngsters” are doing the same!

I also asked our Crew for their reflections on their return to school and it’s clear from their comments that they just want things to be back to normal:

“At first, I was excited to see all of my mates, but at the same time, I had a slight worry in my mind of how the norms would be when we return back to school. Overall, I was happy to be back at school and it had exceeded my expectations”.

“To be honest my return on school didn’t make me feel anxious to be mixing with a large group of people at all as during lock-down I still mixed occasionally with people when I could whilst playing basketball. I was more anxious about the fact the GCSEs are coming closer which causes unnecessary stress. However, now that stress has somewhat subsided and isn’t as much of a worry but glad to be at school as it’s a sign things are normalising again”.

“To reflect on my return to school, I wasn’t very worried about coming back because I knew that the guidelines would be followed by school and that I wouldn’t feel unsafe at all…..”.

“Before coming back to school, I was thinking about how it would all work whether it was class or just around school. I was excited to see my friends again but I also wasn’t looking forward to possibly having to keep 2 metres.Now I’m not as concerned about any of this because nothing has really changed other than having to sanitise my hands every time I enter the building”.

“…..During the quarantine, I didn’t meet my school friends even once, and we only really started keeping contact again a couple of weeks before we came back. Despite that, the idea of getting to see my friends was exhilarating after months spent isolated. And finally, I was glad that the ordeal was over. As somebody who was quarantined a week longer than the rest of the UK, I began to feel how tedious lock-down had become by the fourth month. I found myself counting the days until I was back at school again, purely because I longed for some sense of normality, for feeling like a functioning human again. That’s why I was extremely glad that school managed to open”.

We’re back….even stronger than before!

Glad to be back

By Katie Haughey6th September 2020

I was absolutely delighted to welcome my crew back this week after a long few months of distance learning and the summer break. The change in all thirteen members of my crew that I’ve picked up on over the past week and a half has been astonishing – and I don’t just mean the fact that they’ve all shot up and I don’t recognise their broken voices!

We started back a couple of weeks ago sharing what we’d been up to during the break and making pledges about the sort of person we want to be in year 9. This is a really important year with passage and the Duke of Edinburgh award, so getting our priorities right in these first few weeks is vital. Everyone is excited about doing the outdoor element of the DofE award, as am I. We’ll be working on their first aid skills in coming Friday crew sessions.

Academic crew

We held our first academic crew of the year on Thursday this week. We fetched all workbooks from the short-lived year 8 year, and had a flick through them to discuss what we felt proud of and what elements of our work we wished to improve. There were a few comments about craftmanship and quality that we will be holding each other to account over the coming months, and a few people who noticed that they’d not put as much detail as others in certain activities, so pledged to be productive in their session time.

On the whole I was incredibly impressed with the quality of their work, and am excited to see what they’re capable of producing this year.

Notting Hill Carnival – Why’s it important we celebrate different cultures?

I’d like to appreciate Mrs Hannam for sharing the work she did on Notting Hill Carnival that should have taken place over the August bank holiday weekend. We learnt about the history of Carnival and discussed why these sorts of events and customs we celebrate that are similar. We also discussed historical issues surrounding the press and police involvement in Carnival celebrations, and how that may have influenced people’s perceptions of the celebration.

Birthday celebrations!

We ended crew this Friday with cake and co-op activities, to celebrate the many crew members birthdays that are in late August / early September. We reflected on the arrival of a new year 7 cohort and comparing it with our crew in year 7. We laughed about how sweet all the year 7 friendship-based appreciations were in the community meeting and how during the first few community meetings, I had to limit them to one appreciation each. If only they were still so keen!

Back where we belong!

By A Parker3rd September 2020

My newsfeed has been overrun with ‘back to school’ photos this week – so here’s ours!

After almost 6 months apart, it’s fantastic to be back in Crew together – albeit socially distanced from me, as per our bubble safety measures!

I can’t praise my Crew enough for how they’ve handled the return to school.  They all sauntered back into school like they’d never been away, keen to get right back into lessons.  It’s been an absolute joy to see them back where they belong, sat at their desks with their classmates, enjoying the challenges of this week’s immersion activities.

I always notice the physical changes after the Summer holidays, but the changes have been on another level this year.  Yes, they’ve all come back taller, but I’m even more astounded by the changes in their attitude and outlook.  All of a sudden, my Crew are very grown up!

As we look ahead to what we want to achieve in Y10,  we’ve spent some time revisiting the pledges we made at the start of Y9.  This time last year we were thinking about Passage Presentations and beginning our GCSE journey.  Many of the pledges focussed on improving HOWLs grades in certain subjects by the end of the school year… but the rest is history and we never got to see what those grades would’ve been!

However, I reckon Crew have achieved so much on a personal level during lockdown, above and beyond what we could teach them in school (and no, I’m not talking about Mackenzie’s new found block paving skills!)

So, as most of them wanted to end last year with improved grades, I’m giving them all a 4.5 for their courage, resilience and determination not to let the missed time at school hold them back from wanting to succeed.

Year 10 – we’re ready for you 🙂

Dear Crew

By A Parker16th July 2020

Dear Crew

I’ve just read the blog I posted this time last year, on the last day of Y8.  Look how happy we were!

I remember our last Y8 Crew Session well, not just because we had cake, but because even though you were were all excited for the holidays, you were also looking forward to starting your Y9 journey.

  • You knew it would be an important year.
  • You were nervous about having to do your Passage presentations.
  • You were looking forward to starting your GSCE Choice studies.
  • You were excited about achieving your DofE Bronze Award.

And then this happened:

School Closure Update

Overnight, we had to adjust to a new socially-distanced, locked-down, scary world… We took lessons and Crew online and we had to get used to our new normal:

This change, on top of being told that we couldn’t see family and friends, hasn’t been the easiest thing to cope with and I absolutely get why some of you have struggled with our Strange New World.

I want to thank those of you who have turned up for every Crew hangout, for keeping up with your work and for helping me feel that things were (kind of) normal at least once a week!

If you haven’t shown up for Crew – don’t worry; we understand.  We’re right here waiting for you and your place in our Crew circle is safe.

If you’re behind on your work, be prepared for some hard work catching up, but remember that our whole Crew will be supporting you. As ever, we’ve got your back.

A massive appreciation to those of you who have had the courage to reach out and say that you’ve been struggling to cope.  You are all braver than you think.

 

Our end of year photo looks a little bit different this year, doesn’t it?

I visited some of you yesterday and I can’t tell you how happy I was to see you!  I didn’t realise how much I’d missed you until I saw your smiling faces.

An extra special thanks from me to you – Thomas, Noah, Tom and Ali – for “just” getting on with it (that’s harder than you think during these times!); for your continued hard work; for your kindness; for your humour (even when you didn’t realise you were being funny!) and, above all – for the compassion you’ve unknowingly shown over the past 4 months just by rocking up and being there with me every Thursday at 2pm…  You really are Crew Superstars.

 

 

Y9 wasn’t what we expected it to be but we’ve managed to get up to the top of our Y9 mountain.  The journey was a a bit slower and sometimes lonelier than our Y7 and Y8 journeys, but we made it all the same!  The Y10 mountain will be the biggest and hardest one to climb yet but #wearecrew and I’m ready to race you to the top 😉

Now – go off and enjoy the Summer break.  I’ll see you all back in Crew at the end of August, back in school, getting used to another new normal.

And now I’m checked out.

Stay Safe,
Mrs Parker xx

Dear Crew Parents

By A Parker16th July 2020

Dear Crew Parents

 

We have a saying in school that “if we get Crew right, we get everything right” and my Crew would be far from ‘right’ if it didn’t include you.

I can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve given me over the last 17 weeks.  I’ve spent a lot of time working from home and some of you will know how lonely that can be.  However, I’ve always felt like I’ve had you lot right behind me (especially when chasing up missing work those first few weeks!)

So:

Thank you for responding to my emails and calls.

Thank you for letting me know when I’ve needed to to more.

Thank you for letting me know when I’ve needed to ‘back off.’

Thank you for the messages and kind words you’ve sent to me (there have been a few tears shed after reading them on a Friday night!)

Thank you for supporting your children, the school and me.

Just ‘Thank you’ for everything you do.

You’re all simply amazing and I feel so privileged to get to work with you and your children.

It’s hard to think back to everything Crew achieved before lockdown, but can I just say again how incredibly proud I was of them all during their Passage presentations – certainly the highlight of the year for me and I’m guessing most of you, too!

If you get the chance, please have a watch of our short film All About Crew just to reinforce why Crew is so important to me, featuring our very own Ali from 8 minutes onwards.

Stay Safe,
Angella xx

Shout-outs to those working really hard in Crew Turing & pledges for Year 9

By Katie Haughey14th July 2020

It feels strange ending rounding the school year off with a google hangout before we break up for summer, but it’s been a very strange year for my crew. Having spent the last few months apart, aside from hangouts, I am really looking forward to my crew returning in September so we can properly celebrate the incredible work that they have completed in lockdown.

I know that technically we’re not tracking HOWLs this term, but if we were there would definitely be a few members of my crew that would be on track for a 4.5 for their ‘work hard’ habit. Shout out to Lewis and Reece for maintaining a work rate above 95%, and a huge congratulations to Mollie and Dylan for reaching 100% across their core subjects. I am so proud of how hard you’ve worked, and am excited to see this effort you’ve put into lockdown pay off in y11.

For this week’s crew session, I’d like to have a think about what my crew would like to achieve in Y9. I have recently been organising my google drive and came across this picture of my crew tackling their first mountain. Year nine is a monumental year, my crew will be starting their Duke of Edinburgh award, as well as selecting their option subject, and completing passage to prove their readiness for their GCSE exams. I’m going to be discussing what they might like to take for common mission, as well as asking they come up with a pledge to help them tackle the many mountains that this upcoming academic year will present.

Finally, academic crew stuff aside, I look forward to checking in on hangout this week with my crew and wishing them a lovely summer break. I hope they are able to enjoy some of the great outdoors, like we did in Wales, and reflect on how much they’ve grown as people since our first crew activity, pictured above.

I guess I’m checked out!

Crew Young catch-up, Keisha’s butterfly!

By D Pearson8th July 2020

We’ve all heard of Austin’s butterfly…..so how about Keisha’s butterfly? For our latest update from Crew Young I’ve captured comments from students describing their reactions to recent tragic events in America, and shared their current work and progress on the DofE First Aid course.

Keisha e-mailed me a piece of her beautiful art work last week, and I simply had to include it in our blog as an example of work that she’s really proud of:

Great work here Keisha – I like how you’ve blended the colours together in both the butterfly and the plant. Remember Austin’s butterfly? How he crafted and re-crafted his work acting on kind, specific and helpful peer feedback?

Dominic reminded us that he’s still training for MMA and for his DofE Award:

Well done Dominic, we already know that “you are amazing!” at times, but it’s helpful to be reminded of it now and again!

Summer wished to contribute her thoughts about the death of George Floyd in America:

“...Even things that many people grew up with, things such as comedic blackface or use of racial slurs, were only deemed acceptable due to the deeply rooted history of racism that, despite slavery being abolished, was never truly made illegal.

Therefore, I don’t believe that our generation is “overreacting” as many older generations may have the media believe.
No, we are not overreacting. We are thinking. We are watching. We are solving. We have seen what is wrong with the way things are, and we want to make sure it is never the same way again. 
All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.“
Keisha agreed: “I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I think it was very upsetting and a little unsettling what the police did to George Floyd”.
Maclaren added : “I feel that George Floyd’s death has pushed an issue that was already
at the boiling point from all of the other deaths like this one“.
Louie thought: “The death of George was truly tragic, and it’s upsetting and scary that there are police officers out who took an oath to help and to protect the people in their community, but I’m against the rioting just because he was black, and that they think that the cops killed him because he was black, when the real story was the cop was just a bad officer…“.
Lewis was also less persuaded of a racial element to the incident: “It shouldn’t be all about racism and it has became that. What happened was a police officer was brutal and inhumane to a man. Just because it was a white man and a black man does not mean it is racist at all….”.
One of the things that I’ve really missed during lockdown is the opportunity afforded in Crew sessions for us to discuss and debate key worldwide events such as the Coronavirus Pandemic, or George Floyd’s death. We do this within a compassionate framework where differences of opinion and perceptions are welcomed, voiced, respected and encouraged, especially when they might link directly to our expeditions such as, in this case, “Stand up!”.