It was back during the Easter holidays, when the Senior Leadership Teams from the across our Trust came together to renew our vision and values, that we collectively concluded that the overriding vision of our Trust should be ‘Creating Meaningful Futures’.  This was chosen because it related not only to each child, but also to our staff teams.  It is a positive and optimistic objective reflecting our desire to, and belief that we do, support each other to achieve the outcomes we want for our children, ourselves and each other.

On reflection, we felt that our mission statement (the way we go about conducting our work) should therefore remain unchanged: ‘Learning Together, Learning For All, Learning For Life’ as it reinforced our commitment to:

• include everybody (children and staff) in a process of continual learning and improvement
• value the contribution of each individual in this process
• ensure our policies and practices support continual learning and improvement for all

In order to succeed in achieving the moral purpose we’d established through our vision and mission statement, we also determined six core values intended to guide our day to day actions and develop a strong learning community:

• We are caring
• We are creative 
• We are inspiring 
• We are passionate
• We are innovative 
• We trust each other

The success of our school and the wider Trust has been driven by the energy, motivation and good will of our incredible staff teams who use their professional knowledge and expertise to continuously develop both our curriculum and our approaches to teaching and learning.  This is how we are able to meet the ever-changing needs of our children and ensure that each child achieves their aspirational destination.  It’s understandable then, that in order to maintain our positive impact on the children and communities we serve, we must also support the continuous learning and development of our staff.   This is why this week, our Senior Leadership Teams spent time exploring how we can further strengthen our professional learning culture to ensure everything we do demonstrates our core values, namely that:

• we care about the professional development of every person in our teams
• we want to inspire our teams and for them to be inspired
• we want to tap into each person’s unique passion to unlock their creativity and support innovation, and most importantly
• all of these things can flourish because we trust each other

Our aim is that by strengthening our professional learning culture, we strengthen our collective and shared sense of purpose.  This not only sustains improvements in pupil learning, achievement and wellbeing, but also continues to enhance our sense of ‘making the difference’ and therefore job satisfaction and commitment to our work.  This is how we achieve our vision of ‘Creating Meaningful Futures’, not just for our children, but for our staff as well.

This week we take a closer look at our Creative Arts department. On Tuesday, we were delighted to welcome two musicians Gillian and Elinor, otherwise known as the Polaris Duo, from Live Music Now who came into school to perform an interactive, sensory session for a number of our young people. They brought in the harp and saxophone and performed a number of classical and contemporary pieces, inviting the young people to participate by enabling them to touch the instruments, conduct the ensemble, dance along and join in with the singing.

The staff and pupils enjoyed every minute of the session and would like to thank Elinor and Gillian for giving up their time to come in and share their music with us..

Music is, of course, a very important part of life at New Bridge and Mr Challinor has been very impressed with the pupils’ hard work and enthusiasm..

We’ve been catching ‘Guitar Fever’ at New Bridge this term – all the pupils have been working hard to develop their skills and channelling their inner rock stars! We’ve been working on playing chords and strumming along to a wide range of songs from The Rolling Stones all the way to Billie Eilish! We also enjoyed creating our own song for Super Learning Day, a fantastic cover of ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’. There have been some very impressive performances in class and the Rock Band is practising ready for their concert at the end of term – our pupils are really shining in Music at New Bridge!

I am very pleased to let you know that Donna Ward, who teaches in one of our Interactive Bases, is now a Regional Champion for pdnet. Please click here to find out more about Donna’s new role and the work she will be doing.

Please remember to book your child’s place on our Summer Holiday Club through your ParentPay account before Friday 14th June if you would like them to attend. If you have any questions or need some help requesting a place through your ParentPay account, please contact us.

Gavin

You can find Dawn’s blog for the Learning Centre here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

Click here to read this week’s news from Graham

You can find my previous blog posts here