February 2011

Welcome to the month of lurve! 

As February is the month we celebrate *St Valentine's Day I thought I would start by taking a quick visit to the organ at the civic centre of romance... 

...that wonderful organ we call 'The Heart'

As we all know, the heart is the organ that pumps blood to the various limbs, digits and fiddly bits of our body. Without this function we would immediately die, so the heart is often called a vital organ.  It has often been claimed that the heart is the centre and source of emotion in the human body.  Ancient cultures believed the human soul lived in the heart.  Others thought the heart to be the source of emotion and intelligence which embodied a man's truth, strength and nobility.  But it has been proved by various 'ologists' over the years that this is all complete and utter nonsense - the source of a man's emotion and intelligence is located at an altogether different organ....

...his brain (this is a family accessible site...what else did you expect!?!)

Now please stay with me for just a couple of minutes while I explain how the heart functions.

The heart is associated with love because the ancient Greeks believed it was the target of Eros, known as 'Cupid' to the Romans. Anyone shot in the heart's heart by one of Cupid's arrows would fall hopelessly in love.  Sadly there is no guarantee love will last beyond the holding sweaty hands (which is a true test of love...and includes the list of other horrors such as handling sweaty gym vests and squeezing spots).  So if you would prefer something with a written guarantee then consider buying a car battery. 

Well there you have it: just about everything you need to know about the heart to get the partner of your dreams!!!

February 14th or 'Valentine's Day' this year was a significant date to the county Extended Services team as it was chosen as the date for celebrating our five year journey.  It was an opportunity to say farewell and bon voyage to many old friends and colleagues as we leave our old ships, move into new ships, or in some cases launch ourselves into the rapids without a paddle (or in some cases...even a boat!) 

As many of you are aware David Wright will be retiring at the end of March and the county support team (Sam and Stephanie) will be moving into different roles.  On behalf of the CAPP schools and associated organisations, may I take this opportunity to wish all the extended services team, and all the coordinators covering the entire county from Basingstoke to Brockenhurst, Hayling Island to Hook, the very best of luck and good wishes for the future.

Which leads me to a little bit of a dilemma.  As you can imagine, over the past three and a half years I have accumulated a lot of 'stuff' - including some fabulous contacts, research documents, partnership's account records & invoices, the list goes on and on!  But I am now a little unsure what to do with our partnership's 'stuff' when I eventually have to pack up my office space at the end of this academic year.  We have a slight advantage as we fortunately have this Fareham ES web site as our archive document storage area (for the Minutes of our meetings etc.) but if anyone has any suggestions what you would like done with the rest of our paperwork before I get busy with the shredder after Easter, then please get in touch.

Please also can I remind our CAPP partners you to contact me as soon as possible if you have an idea for any extended services projects.  The CAPP Strategic Board are meeting early in March and I would like to present your project plans.  So far I have applications for children's Saturday cookery classes and weekly youth 'Jammit' music sessions, but I am really keen to see (or hear) more project ideas from any partner organisations.  This will be your last chance to access extended services funding, so please let us make a truly grand exit with lots of wonderful extended school activities, events or learning opportunities for children, young people and their families.

As I have my first fuzzy head-cold of the year, and my colleagues duck every time I sneeze over my computer monitor, I shall leave you with this slightly shorter blog this month.  So rather than reading my usual rambles, please feel free to sit back, listen and watch.  What follows is an excellent animation of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson "Changing Education Paradigms". It is well worth watching.  And not only does it seem to strangely echo the arguments in an assignment I once wrote reference 'Assessment & Emotional Intelligence', it is also interesting to see how animation can help to make the subject more accessible:  

If you are a visual type of learner then would also suggest that you check out some of the other RSA Animate videos on You Tube.  Following my excellent training 'Motivating the unmotivated' this month (and undertaking the first training that included Tai Chi and Hawaiian Dancing) the video 'What motivates us' could be worth viewing; especially if you are looking for strategies to tackle de-motivated teenagers. 

I would also like to quickly take the opportunity to thank Peter Creagh, our Solution Focused Skills Trainer, for making me laugh (even when I was feeling terribly grotty & snotty) and for helping me feel far more positive about this period of rapid change and an uncertain future. 

So to end this month with a big (positive) smile, I have put the following messages I received from a friend of mine via e-mail.  These are some of the entries into a competition to write the most 'unromantic' second line of a Valentine message.   I hope these make the Valentine's Day cynics amongst you chuckle from the bottom of your heart.