Our Trust PD day was a great success with our CEO Nick Blackburn welcoming colleagues with an inspiring dialogue about the inception of Lingfield Education Trust, the exceptional differences we have all made to children’s lives over the last 10 years and exciting updates on where we are heading in the next few years.
We had a motivational guest Speaker, Kevin Pace from SUMO4Schools. Although, this talk did not involve large Japanese men trying to push each other out of a ring, rather the message from Kevin Pace was to help us Shut Up and Move On or Stop, Understand and Move On depending on your preference. Kevin delivered valuable ideas about resilience, stepping outside of your comfort zone and the importance of Hippo Time; that can applied not only in work but at home too.
We were also privileged to be joined by Kirsty Godfrey, Senior HMI, who talked with us about the importance of laying the right foundations in the early years. Staff enjoyed her common sense and no nonsense approach to dispelling many myths about early years provision and OFSTED expectations. The session included thought provoking content linked to early reading, the use of continuous provision to develop children’s language and early writing. As a result, as a Trust, the school improvement team are focusing on early writing heavily over 2023, to ensure that practice in our schools is a strong as our well established early reading offer. Kirsty also kindly fielded several questions from staff members, dispelling some of the mystique around early years and inspection expectations.
The day was excellently received, with Trust colleagues saying, “it was fantastic to see the Trust all together, I hadn’t been to a Trust-wide event since I started at Lingfield. I really enjoyed the Training day, it was great to hear from the CEO Nick Blackburn, the future of the Trust looks very exciting! Kevin from SUMO was not only entertaining but informative throughout, I thought the analogy of the beach ball was brilliant as we can all get stuck in our own perspective sometimes”.