Laurie O’Donnell

Last Thursday and Friday I had the pleasure of attending the P6/7 school show at Eastern Primary School in Dundee. The show was called ‘Hot Dates’ and the story follows a group of primary teachers on the first day of term planning the big (’hot’) events of the school year – from the nativity play to the school sports. It’s a great script for a P6/7 show because the children understand the context of the school, get the jokes and have such fun playing the familiar parts of teachers and pupils.

It was a brilliant show, P6 were on stage throughout as the choir with all of the children in P7 getting a chance to perform each night and many changing roles between the two performances. On the Thursday my daughter Julie was an angel (only very slightly out of character) and on the Friday she was a dinner lady/waitress (pretty much totally out of character).

As a parent I have loved watching my children in school shows and concerts. Eastern Primary has given them both great opportunities to sing, play musical instruments and act whether it was in the school hall, the local church, the theatre and even in Dundee’s famous Caird Hall.

I have organised (more than?) my share of school events in the past from parents’ evenings and prize givings to concerts. So I really appreciate the amount of work that goes into a successful performance. Without taking away any of the credit from the children themselves – it really was their show – you really do have to take your hat off to the teachers, parents, school staff and other volunteers who give up so much of their own time to make sure everything is alright on the night. They have worked tirelessly to find a great script, manage the venue, lead the rehearsals, design the costumes, do the make-up and much more besides. All of this takes place on top of the day job. So much for schools winding down as the summer approaches!

I am left with the image of the children on the stage taking a well deserved bow and looking so proud of their achievements. It is an image that will stay with me for a long time as this was the last ‘hot date’ that I will attend as a parent at Eastern. In many respects I will really miss being the parent of a child at primary and can’t believe that it is 11 years since I attended my first event at Eastern. Happy days for sure, but secondary school beckons and I look forward to many happy days ahead.

My colleague Ewan McIntosh’s post on ‘Quirkology – there is no career path just luck‘ makes for interesting reading.

I left the following comment:
‘My take on what most people call luck is that it’s where preparation meets opportunity. Hard work is (usually/often) a necessary but insufficient condition for good luck. By and large you also need to have the awareness, self-confidence and attitude to risk to make your own luck.’

I think the work of Martin Seligman is important here. Seligman writes on positive psychology and what he calls learned optimism. In the Scottish context the work of Carol Craig and the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being is also significant.

Seligman provides a great message for anyone in education, ie that we can escape from the legacy of low expectations and low self esteem, learn to be more optimistic and as a consequence be happier. The optimism that Seligman promotes is not not blind decontexualised optimism but rather a more balanced approach to life (there are aspects of life and circumstances of living that lend themselves to a healthy pessimism as well as an aversion to risk).

The strength of Craig’s work is that it is located within the Scottish cultural context, is research based, provides a narrative on how we got here and, for me most importantly, does not oversell the benefits of positive thinking.

For Scotland to prosper we need to escape from the self-destructive fatalism that was best expressed by an old school friend of mine who once said: ‘why bother eating healthy food – you might get run over by a bus tomorrow?’

Both Seligman and Craig provide insights that need to be understood and internalised across the Scottish public sector. In the educational context this means getting them embedded into the curriculum and promoted more generally as key components of a Smarter and Healthier Scotland.

One of the great jobs I have in LTS is leading the Scottish Learning Festival. The event is now in it’s 9th year and has evolved from being an exclusive ICT event into the major national showcase for Scottish Education.

SLF2008 takes place over two days, 24 and 25 September, in Glasgow’s SECC. This year the event will be opened by Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hislop and the SLF programme will feature international keynote speakers, 150 seminars and an exhibition of educational resources.

The main theme of this year’s event is Curriculum for Excellence with Glow in support.

We already have 30 out of the 32 local authorities signed-up to take part in practice sharing/showcasing Education Village. Specialised areas will also be dedicated to Health, Early Years and the national cultural sector.

Over the last couple of years an SLF Fringe has started to develop and this year we expect to see the 3rd TeachMeet event at SLF as well as something happening around education futures.

SLF was recently evaluated by George Street research and levels of satisfaction were around the 90% mark with a high proportion of attendees reporting a positive impact on their classroom practice.

We currently have 1125 advanced bookings (with over 300 new attendees) – double the number at this time last year – and expect more than 7,000 to attend over the two days. Advance bookings for the seminars are being taken online and already some seminars are filling up. Last year a number of seminars were oversubscribed so get your booking in early to avoid disappointment.

As we get closer to September I will blog some more on the SLF programme and pick out what I consider to be the highlights.