The Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah will be celebrated between the 16th and 18th September this year (you can take the girl out of the RMPS classroom…) and that got me thinking about new starts.  We tend to leave starting afresh to significant times of the year and I wonder if we miss something by so doing.  I have been talking to the new S5 of late who, almost to a person, have commented on the intensity of S5 as compared to S4 and have said that they are working significantly harder than they expected to.  I suspect that there are some of them who are having “wobbles” wondering if they have chosen the right subjects, made the right choice to come back etc. and we have also had some pupils return to us this week having found that it wasn’t the right time to have left us after all.  Studying religions has shown me that there are actually many opportunities for new starts: the Muslim new year is on the 24th November, Hindi new year will be on the 11th April and for Therevada Buddhists it will be the 25th April next year.  So my message to all youngsters is to reflect on how the last four weeks have gone and to think about what they need to do to keep it going so well or to improve their experience – it’s never too late for a new start.
 

I took the opportunity to visit some S3 pupils in Science this week and came across pupils extracting DNA from kiwi fruit, making DNA helixes from marshmallows and Dolly Mixtures and working out whether you could snap a pencil in two using only three sheets of newspaper.  It seems that there was much learning and enjoyment to be had. 

Speaking of pleasant things, we received a heart-warming telephone call from an elderly lady in the community, thanking an anonymous pupil who helped her with her shopping in a local store at the weekend.  The lady wasn’t sure which year she was from but wanted to let us know that her efforts were really appreciated.  So whoever you are: well done!

Remember that the school is closed to pupils on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th September.