A dot on the Raiseonline....

Imagine.

For the first 8 years of your life you were neglected and abused by everyone at home that was supposed to care for you.  This was normal life and you didn't know any different.  You didn't know that this wasn't how everyone lived.  You didn't even have any idea what birthdays and Christmas were.

When you reached school age you were supposed to be attending school but you didn't get taken there every day.  Sometimes there wasn't an adult sober enough or awake to take you.  You quite liked it when you were there but you didn't know how to please any of the adults and you sensed they weren't very pleased with some of the things you were used to doing at home.   Sometimes they seemed shocked.  Every time the professionals started digging into why your behaviours were different and your attendance poor you were enrolled at a different school.  Until your third one where a shining light of a Deputy/Senco got a gut feeling about you, and bravely acted upon it.  She didn't have much evidence, she took a risk.

Things moved fast as soon as the fragments of your life were joined together by the professionals. You were then whipped swiftly into care and placed in a temporary home.  You had no idea what was happening but it was really great not to have to forage in bins for food.  You still, even two years later, didn't really trust that there would be food.  You hid food and tended to spend any pocket money on food.  Sometimes even making yourself ill hiding and eating it all.  Your school at the time worked really hard on doing everything they could to support the changes and help you learn how to make friends.  You started to learn that you could trust adults but you didn't really trust that they liked you.  Sometimes you tested whether they did by shouting swear words and threatening them.  Sometimes they seemed a bit shocked and scared.  That made you feel sad and lost.  They always gave you a fresh start though and they told you that you were good at things.  You didn't think you were though.  You didn't really understand which things you were supposed to be good at anyway.

After the first 18 months you were moved to a permanent long term home.  You didn't understand that this made you one of the very lucky ones who had a wonderful family who wanted to do everything they could to care for you and commit to the long term.  You had your second ever Christmas.  You didn't understand and became angry and scared.  That seemed to make the adults sad and you didn't understand why.

You were placed at a local village school.  It was hard, you found the change confusing.  You were much taller than the other children but you were so very desperate to get into the role play area in the infant class.  Your level of learning was below that expected for a seven year old and you knew and could see how far behind you were.  But you started to learn that the adults at school would help you and work with you whenever you needed them to.  You started to get some lovely one to one sessions for learning and you really enjoyed those. You started to learn that it isn't a good idea to take a teddy bear everywhere.  You started to learn that whatever happened the adults around you at home and at school cared.  You started to learn that you were going to be fed, spoken to and cared about every day at home and at school.  No matter what you did.

You started doing some things to test whether this was going to stay true.  You started doing those things two weeks before SATs week, which you didn't know about of course.  The adults didn't find that very easy to deal with, especially the school ones, but they worked through it.  Because it did stay true.  The adults cared no matter what.

The first morning of SATs you felt worried and sad.  You got the idea something important was happening and it involved doing hard school work.  You couldn't do hard school work.  Your adults at home though supported you and fed you a good breakfast, made sure you had both pairs of glasses and allowed a small stuffed elephant.  Everyone was bringing a mascot that day.  You felt better.  At school you felt better again when your teacher explained that you were going to be sitting separately with two school adults you normally work with one to one so that you could think and not be disturbed. You wanted to give it the best go you could, and you did.  You felt proud that you only had to miss out four questions.  You told your teacher you were going to try hard tomorrow too.

                     ...................................................................................................

The child you have imagined joined a small cohort of year 6 pupils in November at a level 2C.  The child represents 14% of that cohort's results.  The headteacher knew that this would affect attainment results.  The headteacher decided that the child being in a small, nurturing environment was more important than attainment results and green Ofsted attainment data dashboards.

This is just one child.  Many schools have large groups of these children.  There isn't enough understanding by the floor target decision makers about what it takes to put a child like this back together.  And this child has a permanent long term home and so is one of the lucky ones compared to some children in care.  Most inspection teams now look at progress and look carefully about what is being done with children like this.  Ours certainly did.  But not all do.  The culture of fear that exists means that sometimes these children, who already have enough to cope with, are even further disadvantaged.

To @oldandrewuk on paradigms and the Wizard of Oz.

I have read the blogs reacting to the Sir Ken Robinson 'Changing educational Paradigms' video, I appreciated them as I have lots to learn.  I'm pretty green at times in this first headship and always keen to keep learning.  Here are my thoughts.  I'm not an arguer really so they are not in masses of detail.

Willingham; interesting.  Particularly the part about Romanticism which is an excellent point.  I don't particularly agree with the rest.  For example I think teachers do play the 'guess what's in my head' game quite a lot, whether they intend to or not.

Sanger; I agree with most of this actually.  In fact, in day to day realistic mode more the way I run things in my school than the Sir Ken ideal if I'm honest with myself and Twitter.

This is a point actually that it's important to be honest about.  Showing off on Twittter (as my husband refers to it) is all too easy.  It isn't intentional but I think it would be a fib to say I never do it.  However I do keep some of the essence of what I like about the ideals, including Sir Ken's, as much as I can.  I also have put some of these Sir Ken ideals into practice in my small village school.  I am very much the same in day to day life as on Twitter.  A tendency toward idealism and a bit of a show off at times, but fair and eager to learn.

I agree with a lot of Tom Bennett's post.  I think it's a large school point of view but I suspect I may agree even more when I am leading an organisation with more than 58 children and 12 staff.  I certainly agree with his points about shift happens!

Your post had me at hello as you have included examples from my favourite two cartoon strips of all time.  I think what we do is a mixture of Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes most of the time.  I then found that I do agree with your post about creativity pretty much in it's entirety.  Including the part about Sir Ken.

To summarise my thoughts; I get that 'Changing Educational Paradigms' has it's flaws.  I see the lack of realism.  However, whilst building an ever increasing sense of realism I don't want to lose the part of me that loves the ideals of and gets inspired.  Sometimes reality isn't really very inspiring.  Sometimes 'not looking at the man behind the green curtain' is quite a good idea.  Sometimes believing that you can click your shiny red heels together and be safely at home, even though that's utterly erroneous, gets you through.  The systems and realism need to dovetail this so that the organisation and the learning within keeps moving forward.

The link to @oldandrew 's list of blogs about 'Changing Educational Paradigms' is teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/responses-to-sir-ken-robinsons-education-paradigms-video/
These blogs are well worth reading.

Wasted Investment? Why do so many teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years?

I have been wanting to get involved with #blogsync for awhile now and am glad to make my first contribution.  This month’s is a vital topic and one thatpushed me into getting involved in more than intention.

 

BBC news recently reported that numbers of teachers in theUK leaving the profession is up by a fifth on the previous year.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20585457   In2010 it was reported by The Guardian that 50% of newly qualified teachers hadleft the profession in the first five years. Teachers leaving the profession is a concerning issue.  The focus of Department for Education answersto the question of what to do about teachers leaving the profession alwaysseems to shift swiftly to how they are going to provide more teacher training.  How a range of professionals from military to financial can be trained in order to sortout this problem.  ‘Teachers are leavingthe profession?  Train some morethen!  Just keep training them!  They’re still leaving?  Train different ones!’  It’s almost a little ‘yes minister’ to mymind.  

This brings me to the idea of investment.  With ‘wasted investment’ as the title tothis; what, how and in whom is the investment? The initial investment is being made by the bright eyed aspirationalwannabe teacher.  Me 19 years ago,thousands of those that dream of teaching and of making a difference.  Thousands every year.  I dreamed of being a teacher.  I didn't go into the profession because of perceived job security, because my parents wanted me to or because I was unsure what else to do.  I count myself lucky there that my aspiration also turned out to be something I could do but it still took investment from me.  More than ever before for aspiring teachers that investment isfinancial, course fees, the cost of living and all of these factors weighheavily on that choice, on that aspiration. Then there is the investment of work. Getting the grades needed to embark on that journey toward thedream.  Clocking up some school hours andmaking sure you enjoy the education environment and the company of the dearyoung angels, and those not so angelic!  The investment of making sure your behaviour is appropriate out of university, the realisation and acceptance that there are certain social passtimes and behaviours that are off limits for aspiring teachers.  Particularly in the age of camera phones and social media.  Then there’s the investment of pouring your heart and soul into 3 or 4years of training, if not more.  Workload like you’venever known, being told that it’s only the tip of the iceberg as far asworkload goes!  I remember being unsureif I’d make it to the end of a 9 week teaching practice never mind a 14 weekterm as a teacher.  But the stamina beganto build.

Is that the way workload investment looks now?  Do students invest enough?  I hear far too many stories, and haveencountered situations myself, where students just don’t seem to understand oraccept the workload.  I have even beentold ‘But it’s my weekend!’ by a student on final placement.  Unless there is that level of realism and buyin then a young teacher can’t expect to build the type of stamina needed forthis profession.  Eventually they willhave to do all of that work and perhaps manage their own children and homes andeven endeavour to have a life!  They mayeven find they become a teaching Headteacher with two small children and thenstamina is most certainly needed!  One ofthe most common causes sighted by teachers leaving the profession in thearticles I read was ‘burn out.’  If youcan gradually build that stamina and be taught about workload management that ‘burnout’ can be prevented.

How do Initial Teacher Training Institutions give thismessage about workload?  In my experiencesometimes they are not fans of the tough conversation and that can tend to fallto the school.  On too many occasions Ihave seen students repeating and repeating teaching practices to get throughand pass where myself and other schools have raised concerns about whether thisperson has the level of skill and resilience to be part of this profession.  To be successful at the whole job of ateacher and therefore to be happy doing it.  ITT providers are up against it as studentscan take action against their ITT provider if they fail.  There is, as with so many situations now, a hugeamount of student right and far less student responsibility.  I have seen many successes related to ITTproviders but they tend to be where the student has some level ofprofessionalism, drive and work ethic.

To put it into the analogy of a building, if the foundationsare weak the building will eventually crumble and corrode.  Particularly if it is further buffeted by theweather.

Now to think about that ‘buffeting.’  I am not a person who thinks our job isharder than the job of other professionals. I don’t do the job of another professional but they all have pressure,workload and accountability.  Howeverthere is one key difference to our profession and that is this.  Most people have been to school.  This means that most people feel qualified tohave an opinion about school and education and therefore our job!  Further compounded by the media and the factthat we are paid public money.  It isn’tcomfortable to feel ‘owned’ and this feeling can quickly transfer to ‘hounded.’  If then there are other factors ‘buffeting’ anew teacher who is still building their resilience and stamina to the workload,the pupils (and the germs!) then no wonder that young teacher begins toconsider leaving the profession.

Pupil behaviour is a commonly cited cause for youngteachers leaving.  I read some realhorror stories researching this blog.  Ididn’t enter this profession with the confidence and presence I have now.  I was pretty shy, I barely spoke.  (Yes really!) A young teacher needs to know that if a pupil swears at or threatensthem then they are doing that to every single adult in the organisation atonce.  And that the pupil will then betreated as though that’s what they have done! I started with 4 year olds so I had a raft of different difficulties tobeing threatened but in my first school, and in fact in every school I haveworked in since including the one I’m Headteacher of, every child is ALL of ourchildren.  All of the time.  This same approach also works with difficultparents.

I’m deliberately not going into our inspectorate in thisblog.  I know it is sighted as a factorin teachers leaving the profession, but I believe it is the way theorganisation deals with the accountability system that is key, not theaccountability system itself.

Difficulty with colleagues is another commonly mentioned ‘buffetingfactor.’  It’s important to remember thatyoung teachers are also young adults. Their social skills are not yet honed and polished.  To put it simply they sometimes lack tact orthey ask dozens of irritating questions! The solution comes down to the same thing.  School ethos. This is set and constantly maintained by the Head and senior team.  This must be chosen, value based andconstantly adhered to.  If you unwittinglyengage in negative behaviours at the top they will bleed all the way throughyour organisation until it becomes a very unpleasant place to work.  When I say negative behaviours I mean thingslike unhealthy work life balance, gossiping, blaming people for mistakes andseeming panicky for example.  Ouryoungest and newest teachers, by the way, will emulate those behaviours themost quickly as they are looking to their leaders for how to be.  It’s not always easy as we are all humanbeings too but our behaviours must be chosen and positive.  As Headteachers we are the Grand Old Duke ofYork ‘when we are up they are up, and when we are down they are down!’

This blog is entitled ‘wasted investment’ but I also seehuge numbers of teachers leaving the profession as a wasted resource.  As a profession we are potentially wastingthe opportunity for a pupil to have a teacher whose personality reallyresonates with theirs.  I would beinterested in a psychometric study looking at the personality traits ofteachers leaving the profession to see if there are any common threads.  I would then be interested to see if thosesame threads are there in disengaged pupils. If our system is getting it wrong for so many young teachers then is oursystem getting it wrong for pupils with the same traits?  If so, then we are wasting the solution tothe problem for some of our disaffected youngsters.  And that really is a waste.

What if...

I don't think this blog will anywhere near do justice to how inspired I am nor to how much I have learned today but I'm going to give it a go!  The train is delayed so there's time!  It's tempting to feel cross about being delayed but am I not always hankering for more time to be still?  Well, here I am.  Still.  Looking at the beautiful Yorkshire countryside from the train window.

I have been to three inspiring places today.  The first was Springwell Community School in Barnsley.  I deliberately arrived early as I wanted the chance to look around and learn.  I want to provide, within mainstream school, as close to that which a special provision gives as I possible can so that we can remove barriers for our children.  I suspected, having met Dave Whitaker the head at Headsroundtable, that I would find gold in terms of ideas at Springwell and I was not at all disappointed.  It is a calm, quiet learning environment.  Soft music is piped around the building.  It is also colourful and vibrant.  There are wonderful break out spaces.  The learning is enthralling and all based on the needs of the pupils.  It has KS1-4 all in a wonderful cube shaped building with some truly amazing areas for learning.

Of course, I can't emulate the learning spaces, my school was built in 1857, but the ethos is after my own heart.  The staff are bright eyed with passion.  They are astute, articulate and very knowledgeable about removing barriers and enabling success for these children, and for one another as a team.  They are clear about personal strength, resilience and moral purpose.  There is fun and banter.  The curriculum is engaging and vibrant.  Staff are keen to chat and answer questions about their school. I have pages of notes!  When I have digested them all I shall write another blog about the potential to remove barriers and do as much as we can in mainstream to give our children that type of opportunity.

The second inspiring place was within my own mind.  It was that state one is in when really exciting learning is taking place.  There were so many links, and they were almost seamless.  From what Springwell do, to laughter, banter and engagement, to being read to by one of the best storytellers I have heard in a while, to early years creating an exciting and messy world of learning to music waves and brainwaves.  There was movement, emotion, laughter, music.

Sadly I had to leave early as my husband had a rather important phone call announcing visitors at his school first thing tomorrow morning.  He was an absolute brick when I had my inspection in October and I need to be there for him. Plus the kids are a little young to fend for themselves!

As I changed train in Sheffield I stepped outside the station for some fresh air.  And there I found the third inspiring place.  Sheffield Hallam university was bathed in bright sunshine and the words of the Andrew Motion poem 'What if...' were literally emblazoned on the side of the building.  The sight of it in sunlight is even more inspiring than the words alone.  I shall add pictures to this blog post when I have had chance to download them from my camera.  Here is the poem, really sums up the day for me.

What If..? by Andrew Motion

O travellers from somewhere else to here
Rising from Sheffield Station and Sheaf Square
To wander through the labyrinths of air,

Pause now, and let the sight of this sheer cliff
Become a priming-place which lifts you off
To speculate
What if..?
What if..?
What if..?

Cloud shadows drag their hands across the white;
Rain prints the sudden darkness of its weight;
Sun falls and leaves the bleaching evidence of light.

Your thoughts are like this too: as fixed as words
Set down to decorate a blank facade
And yet, as words are too, all soon transferred

To greet and understand what lies ahead -
The city where your dreaming is re-paid,
The lives which wait unseen as yet, unread.

Real life Twitter

I like to talk to people.  I like to smile at people, I like to make eye contact with other human beings.  I also like to be 'alone among people' part of a busy throng with all of life all around me as I sit still.

I am a very lucky human being.  I am with people all of the time.  I have a vibrant, fabulous family.  Immediate and extended.  We are a big, loud, happy, crazy melee.  We laugh, we love one another, we shout, we cry.  We live every moment that is there to be lived.  In my professional life, by the very nature of my job, I am centre of everything.  My school is like a family too and there is always someone around to bounce ideas off or chat about life in general.  But sometimes I really love stepping outside of that.  Being alone, thinking, being me in my own context.  Or a different context.

Going away for work really gives me the opportunity to do lots of the things I don't do all that often that I mention above, and that are very important to me.  They give a different perspective and show me that life itself is a huge big real life twitter feed that we hardly ever take the opportunity to enjoy.

Every time I go on a longer train journey I get talking to someone. These conversations have never been anything but enriching and enjoyable.  Today was no exception.  I met a squash coach who works in schools, his local leisure centre and squash club.  It was fascinating to hear about how squash can be adapted for young children, even as young as four.  My notebook has a note to contact my local squash club when I get home.  We need to offer children as wide a taste of sports as we can, we don't know which one's theirs!  We also talked about my job (his wife is a teacher) our kids and nice stuff we have coming up on the horizon.  As he left the train, a few stops before me, he commented that these sorts of interactions are so rare and most people don't even give eye contact any more.  I have noticed that but I think there are ways around it...

As I said in my Teachmeet London talk about Bravery I have always talked to people.  Long before the prevalence of social networking.  I have made some great friends through chance encounters, have had some of my top ten days with people I have just met through total chance.  If you are genuine, authentically you, and you smile, most people will chat.  It's also important to gauge if the person is enjoying their own thoughts and leave them to those if that's the case.  But often the universe aims people at one another for a variety of reasons and those opportunities are there for the taking.

If you do take those opportunities you learn something so crucial.  People are good.  We live in fear, we are kept in fear by our government and our media.  Of course I am not saying that everyone is good and there are safety rules that must be adhered to.  However, I have found that most people are great and just like me in their values, their hopes, their dreams, their love for those small creatures that wake us up too early every day.  We love the same loves, we fear the same fears, we hope the same hopes.  We look up at the same stars.

Times of austerity and difficulty breed difference, the rise of UKIP shows this.  This is my biggest fear, that fear itself will cause us to tear one another apart.  To shut out and not welcome in.  To narrow instead of widening.  We need diversity and interactions with one another more than ever.  Collaboration and Co operation is key here, not survival of the fittest.

Of course Twitter is a hub of interaction.  A lot of that interaction is just like I have described above.  Watching the live feed of the SLTeachmeet after Pedagoo London yesterday was a joy and I was moved by not only the content but the contact.  We like one another on twitter and we want to meet one another, that happens a lot now and has happened to me a lot.  I have never yet found anyone I have met having chatted to them on twitter to be any different at all in 'real life.'  However, I guess that is the nature of those of us who are exactly the same on twitter as we are in 'real life.'

There are a lot of faceless ones.  I have no issue with the satirical twitter accounts.  It's clear what that is about and I often lament the lack of satire nowadays.  Where I do get bothered is when the faceless ones choose to be unpleasant and personal.  But then that's what the block button is for!  The wider concern though is the opportunity to be faceless.  Imagine if you are walking around avoiding eye contact all day, then going home to a faceless twitter account and being downright mean to whoever you feel like denegrading.  Such an odd, unnatural social premise but one that I'm sure isn't uncommon.  I am sure this is born within attachment disorder and social exclusion and I think at the moment we only see the tip of the iceberg.  I suspect being better at spelling, grammar and punctuation won't help this situation!

Anyway, back to the joy!  My top ten stranger encounters in no particular order:

*the time I met an Oxford student who explained planes of existence to me in mathematical terms
*meeting a podiatrist from Belfast at a rowing regatta who ended up a lifelong friend
*meeting a man who set up charities and putting him in touch with a parent trying to set up a charity
*getting chatting to a man dressed as a highwayman, his fab friend and two other gorgeous people in the lobby at the Blue Fin building and then spending the rest of the day having adventures with them before all seeing the Amanda Palmer gig together.
*meeting a lad dressed as horse on the way to his stag do and chatting to him and all of his extended family and friends
*meeting a brilliant young lass who camped next to us at a festival who went on to be a psychologist
*a great chat with a squash coach that has given me some new ideas for children's sport
*a great chat at the V festival with a girl getting bullied about her looks about how great she looks and what crap that is
*chatting to a bin man who felt he ought to be more and telling him he was great as he is
*chatting to a dad and daughter as he took her home to London from her weekend visit to him in Thanet, she gave me an education in BBM and was only a year older than my daughter (scary!)

There are many more.  People are good.  Talking to them feels like a risk, and sometimes I suppose it is.  But  if you always avoid the pain you never get the dance :)

The realms of possibility

Last weekend I overheard a rather amusing argument going on between my two children.  The younger, my three year old son, was telling his nine year old sister that when he grows up he is going to be a clock.  She was pointing out to him that he can't be a clock when he grows up and he was becoming more and more insistent and cross that yes he jolly well can and will! 

Just to explain a little, yes my children are a little on the eccentric side however, this desire to be a clock comes from the grandfather clock in the hall at their grandparents house.  When the children stay overnight the treat the next morning is to wind up the grandfather clock.  My son finds this particularly magical.  He has named the clock 'grampy clock' and often cites him as his best friend.  Understandable then that he might aspire to emulate his early role model as an adult!

It struck me as I listened to them that somewhere between the age of three and nine the realm of possibility gradually eases itself into the psyche.  The idea of being a tiger when you grow up, my nephew's early career aspiration, becomes devoid of possibility.  In some ways rightly so, obviously there are things far outside of that realm.  However, I think the realm, the circle of possibility closes in tighter and tighter the older a child gets.  So that by the time they are emerging into adulthood more things feel impossible sometimes than possible.  The circumference of that circle of possibility is also often linked to social background, aspiration (or lack of it) and experiences at school.

Listening to the fabulous @sulibreaks 'Why I hate school but love Education' one line really stood out to me.  'If education is the key, school is the lock.' When do we start to reduce the circumference of the circle of possibility?  Are we even able to define when that starts to happen?  Is that so deep in our pattern of behaviour as an institution that we can't or don't want to define it?  Even if we are able to define it, dare we?  Especially in schools in areas of deprivation.  I have written several blogs about being mentally shut down by the idea of the ultimate accountability measure.

It's hard with curriculum parameters feeling tighter and tighter in line with national testing not to continue down this road.  Narrowing, reducing to the outcomes that will lead to positive accountability judgements.  But what about possibility?  One of my favourite ever places to work had the mission statement 'We will build unstoppable teams to achieve what, at the outset, seemed impossible.' I'm not sure if we achieved the impossible, but we certainly achieved the improbable.  Raising the results of a school that had become the 'sink school' and creating a place where the children felt they could be anyone and do anything they wanted to.  This was my first experience of leadership and I loved it.  I was greener than green as a 28 year old deputy head but I learned such a huge amount from two fabulous leaders above me.  More than anything I learned that what I had been conditioned to think was impossible, was possible.  That is that I could be larger than life, take risks, cope with crushing disappointment, celebrate amazing success.  As a child I had been taught to be a good girl, be quiet, work, get good grades.  Don't be difficult though, and don't make mistakes.  I also learned that children can be so much more than is expected of them, and the loyalty of those children and families once I earned it, is like nothing I have ever experienced.

It's possible to change things in a school that is seen as impossible.  It might not be probable, but it is possible.

There are many reasons I am throwing my belief, time, effort and money into being part of @headsroundtable . One of the main ones though is possibility.  It is possible, and indeed probable that it will make a difference to policy and help us to shape our children's futures.  It is probable, not just possible, that it will stop children's aspirations and achievements being capped.  It is possible this will influence curriculum in a way that will widen that circumference of possibility for children, especially in areas where they really need that.  It is probable, actually definite, that I will know I did something to try and make a difference.

If every child left us resolved and with the skills to do all they can to make a positive difference...

Possible?



 

Beautiful story

I love you little Monster by Giles Andreae

One evening, long after my sleep time Big softly crept to my bed and stretched out warm fingers to ruffle my hair 'I love you my darling' Big said. Now, Big must have thought I was sleeping and I didn't open an eye. Instead I just let the words float through my mind like balloons floating up through the sky. 'I love you my small,' Big continued 'But there's so much to do in the day that it's hard to sit down and make enough time to say all of the things I should say, and it's funny but now that you're sleeping and everything's quiet and calm the words seem to be much more easy to speak.' And Big laid a hand on my arm.

'You're everything I always dreamed of, you've got so much beauty inside, the way that you smile, that you laugh, that you dance makes my heart want to sing out with pride. You live as though life's one huge present, unwrapping a bit every day that's just how we all should be living, my love and look at you showing the way! And sometimes I know when I scold you, you feel that I'm being unfair. But please understand that is just out of love' Big swept back a strand of my hair.

'There are things in this life that can hurt you. They come to us all, that I know. But they give us chances to learn, darling small, and they give us chances to grow. So when you get knocked down my sweetheart look up at the sky without fear, for sometimes we need to be flat on our backs before starlight begins to appear. And please, above all else remember keep love in your heart little one. Reach out to the world like a beautiful flower stretches out to the warmth of the sun. It's the only sure way to be happy, the only sure way to be free. Believe in yourself and believe in your dreams and you'll be all you dream you can be. '

With that Big lay down on my pillow and planted a kiss on my head. 'My beautiful, wonderful, glorious child, you light up my world' Big then said.

With that Big crept out of my bedroom, turning round for one last little peep, I hugged my small pillow and smiled a big smile and then slowly I drifted to sleep.