Just as I was reflecting on all the wonderful moments of the last half-term at NLCS and envisaging a smooth landing as we reached half-term, a curveball was thrown our way with a call from our COO at 01:55 on Wednesday morning. Our boiler house was on fire and our power and gas supply had been cut off. For the next three hours of the morning, a handful of colleagues (those who had the misfortune of not turning their phones on silent) worked on communicating with the community, keeping education going remotely, and considering the critical issue of restoring power. I am incredibly grateful to the whole NLCS community for its resilience and good spirit during a critical incident.
I am grateful to colleagues for seamlessly moving into action to keep everything going. Creative solutions were found to potentially very significant challenges. Our school database was down and at 3am there was a horrible moment where we wondered how we would contact all parents without access to their email addresses. Luckily, School Post came into its own as all the contacts were stored there too. The next morning we found a workaround to sending out our 11+ admissions decisions without a database. More straightforward were decisions about teaching and learning! Teachers’ muscle memory from the pandemic enabled them to spring into action. It wasn’t the throwback we wanted, but thank goodness we had experienced online teaching before.
I am grateful to pupils for their good cheer and for getting on with things. The fact that the site was busy yesterday with pupils collecting belongings is a indicator of the sheer conscientiousness of our students. They were all remarkably positive given the situation. Perhaps three days at home was a welcome boon after a very busy half-term.
I am grateful to all our parents for their patience and support. I am sure that the significant disruption to many working days was not what they wanted, but they have been nothing but supportive. A particular thank you to our Junior School parents, many of whom would have been supporting their daughters’ remote learning for the first time as parents. Not an easy task and we are so grateful.
Communities show their true colours in a crisis. One thing I didn’t know how to do at 4am was how to send a text message to all staff, so we were reliant on their reading email or picking up What’s App messages if Senior Team members happened to have their personal mobile numbers at hand. The forgiveness of colleagues who hadn’t seen the email, had set off for work and then had to turn back for home was much appreciated. The stoicism of the pupils and parents was just as much appreciated, and it was particularly sweet when students asked colleagues how they were when they arrived at school to collect belongings. I saw the can-do colours of my leadership team as they thought about all the big and little things – could we keep the trips on? What about the lacrosse camp (Mr Brown had already ordered a generator without my even asking)? Could we provide VMT music lessons? What should we do about the bags of wet swimming kit in the Junior School following a lifesaving lesson the previous day? (Answer: Mr Q hung it all up to dry.)
We are really looking forward to being back in school and until then, we wish everyone a wonderful half-term.
Mr Q ensuring all wet swimming kit was hung up to dry!
