Fake Headteacher: Welcome back newsletter No.1

Dear Staff,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you back after the summer holiday. I hope you managed to find time to relax and to spend time with your family. I realise this is hard to do during term time which is why I tried to restrict how many emails and text messages I sent you over the last six weeks. Thank you to those staff members who managed to email the information I needed. For those of you who didn’t have time because you were trying to have a break, please could you email me ASAP with the information I asked for.

I know many of you wanted to pop into school over the holidays to create an exciting learning environment for the children. But as you know, the cleaners didn’t want to be disturbed during the holiday which is why the school was only open yesterday. The cleaners said they couldn’t remember how your classrooms were set out, so they just put all of your furniture in the middle of the room. I hope that didn’t cause you too many problems; it shouldn’t have taken too long to sort out. I hope giving you the last hour on the inset day was enough time to sort your classrooms out.

I know the last few weeks of the summer term were extremely busy with productions, report writing and parents’ evenings etc. and how this had a knock on effect with the Maths and English training we were intending to deliver. I apologise if many of you are still confused on how to implement our new and exciting teaching programs this term due to the lack of training. In some ways, it was lucky the six weeks holiday arrived when it did, as I am sure you were able to read up on it further. I have penciled in some extra meetings in addition to staff meetings so we can catch up with training. I intend to carry out some learning walks in the first two weeks to see how it’s all going.

I realise you probably didn’t have time in the last week of term to meet up with your colleagues to plan for the autumn term. For those of you who have to plan everything yourself because you in a one form entry year group, don’t worry; I won’t expect all of your planning to be completed until the third day back. I trust this will give you the quality time you need to ensure all areas of the curriculum are planned for in a creative manner. Please could you share with parents your learning journeys this week too. I know they won’t read them, and you probably want to concentrate on organising your classroom and planning your lessons, but it looks good if we do them.

I also realise that we are only back for three days in the first week but could we have a staff meeting after work on the first teaching day. I realise we had an inset on the first day back but we ran out of time and I have some important Ofsted information to share with you. Also, please could you make sure your displays are up by Friday. Unfortunately, PPA won’t start until week two because the teacher is sick.

Have a great few days with your new class.

PS I forgot to mention last term that baseline testing needs to happen in the first few days. I realise you probably had lots of fun activities and get to know you games to play, but this data will be good to show Ofsted.

PPS Please make sure you regularly check your emails over the next few days, as this is how I will be communicating with you this term (I know we are a small school, but emailing means I can contact you more easily).

Fake Headteacher

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