Greenfields Winter 2009 Update

If you’re reading this, I assume that you are a Friend of Greenfields. You’ll be very interested, then, in what’s happening with your school.

I know that you are probably bombarded with information these days containing various items of Good News, Very Good News and Extremely Good News and there may even be a temptation not to read this email fully because you’ve read so many like it -but bear with me, please, because I’m trying to tell you something that is genuinely important and actually really inspiring.

You might have noticed your school has had its ups and downs. Right now, it’s on the way up -and my plan is to take it Higher Up than it has ever been. We have an improved organisational structure in place; we have some extraordinary evolutions occurring; we are about to explode with new ideas in a way you’ve probably not imagined.

• We’re currently engaged in the biggest technological upgrade in the school’s history.
• We’re playing a bigger role in spreading knowledge of Study Technology throughout the UK.
• We’ll soon be offering a whole range of exciting new services and features.
• We’re thinking “outside the box” in an effort to service you and your children better and better.
• We’re preparing for changes in the UK education system in refreshing and imaginative ways.
• We’re about to release a new prospectus and other new and inspiring literature.
• We’re creating new visions of what is possible with education in this country.

As the new Head Teacher I’d very much like you to be part of all this. Come and meet me to see how you fit in and how you and your children could benefit from everything that’s going on.

And tell me you’re excited as soon as you can! Reply to this entry now!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Summer School 2009

From Summer School, we have rave results coming in from parents and children who took part.

"We changed the format this year," says Deputy Head Mark McQuade. "We opted for a set of activities and services located on-site with teachers creating interesting and engaging activities within the resources of the school, and it seems to have paid off. Teachers and pupils alike were beaming at the end and I'm getting very good feedback from everyone involved."

Enquire now about next year to avoid disappointment!

A LEVEL EXAM RESULTS!

The AS and A2 examination results came out in August and Greenfields did extraordinarily well!

Chloe Wicks (pictured) scored FULL MARKS for two out of three A Level English Literature modules and 87 out of 90 for the third, along with glowing As for Maths and Drama! In fact, Chloe has just completed her first term at Brasenose College, Oxford.

One Art student received As for her fantastic Art modules including one with FULL MARKS! She is going on to study at Brighton University, very pleased and thrilled! Another Art student received As for her two splendidly creative AS Art modules!

Another student scored A grades for his AS Maths modules!

All these A Level students are stars in their own right and shining examples of what is possible here at Greenfields!

The Computer Revolution Continues!

Parent Claire Loré recently instigated a fantastic weekend of fund-raising frolics featuring a Classic Film Evening with French cuisine provided -we watched the all-time great movie “Casablanca” starring the inimitable Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman- and this was followed the next day with a sponsored swim which was family-orientated fun for all concerned.

Together, these events raised close to £2,000 towards the school’s new plan to implement advanced computer technology step-by-step across the school.

“We’re now much closer to completing the first stage of the installation of computers in the school,” says popular ICT Teacher and Network Manager Mr. David Bailey.

Greenfields is undergoing a kind of revolution.

The school with the reputation for being friendly, caring and safe is becoming friendlier, more caring and even safer. As a matter of fact, it might just be the friendliest school in the world!

“So much has happened over the last month,” says new Head Teacher Mr. Hudson. “In these newsletters we can only give you a glimpse of the whole picture. I invite you to come and see for yourself the range and scope of these positive changes.”

STOP PRESS: Mr. Hudson in London!

Stay tuned for news of a planned speech by Mr. Hudson in London! We'll let you know as soon as the details are worked out!

Greenfields New Head: Mr. Hudson

The Big News (in case you didn’t already know) is that the school has a new Head Teacher, and he is Mr. Grant Hudson. Most of you will know him -he's been our Head of English for some twelve years and has run the Sixth Form for about nine years.

Veronica Tupholme, the previous well-respected and loved Head, has been promoted to Greenfields Educational Trust management, alongside Chief Executive Beverley Croft, where she will be able to oversee academic quality in the school and the Trust's other activities, such as the Effective Education Centre and Children's House Nursery in East Grinstead.

"It's an exciting time for the school," says Mr. Hudson. "There have been enormous positive changes recently -you will read about a tiny fraction of them in this newsletter- and I look forward to meeting with you soon. We'll have a Head's Tea in the next few weeks where I'll get the chance to do just that and to find out what you need from me. In the meantime, please feel free to write or call or even drop by and find out for yourselves what's going on here!"

Exciting new Clubs and Societies

At the end of the Spring half-term Greenfields launched a whole array of new clubs and societies across all age groups.

Lower School: Miss Lesha put up several notices which Lower School children then had to sign to express an interest in the following clubs: Way to Happiness Club, Gardening Club, Choir, Cooking Club, Recorder Club, Camping Club, Arts and Crafts Club and others. Lower School students signed up for each club by the dozen!

Senior School: Lunchtime and after-school clubs have been created in the Senior School based on the activities requested by the students themselves, including: Book Club, Writers’ Society, Drama Club, Games and Cards Club, Photography Club, Film School, Sports Club, Outdoors Club and a Choir.

More Clubs will be added this half term.

The computer revolution has begun!

Popular ICT Teacher and Network Manager David Bailey briefed parents and teachers of the school recently on the school’s new plan to implement advanced computer technology step-by-step across the school. Questions were answered and Director of Studies Jeff Smith and parent Clare Loré spoke to the group and many different fund-raising ideas were suggested. The implementation has been broken down into segments.

“The first step was to get an advanced interactive white board into the Lower School,” said Mr. Bailey. “That cost £3,500.”

Parents and teachers are engaged in fund-raising constantly, and welcome any help or contribution. For more details, please contact David or Jeff Smith directly at the school.

We look forward to a new era of computer technology at Greenfields!

From the Editor

Welcome to the first of our "new-look" blog entries! We hope to be able to provide you with fresh, up-to-date and exciting news as it happens on a regular basis through this medium. We hope that you'll find items of interest in each one. There's certainly enough material at this end!

"Items shown here by no means include everything that is going on at the moment," says newly-appointed Head Teacher Mr. Hudson. "The old Greenfields spirit is very much alive and well. Old friends are returning, thrilling new ideas are being implemented, education here is becoming more and more fun. The only way to be completely informed is to call in and see us! You'll be very welcome!"

Please also feel free to give us feedback on anything else to do with the school.

The ideal school...

The ideal school would be an activity where pupils came to achieve an education based on freedom and understanding and where they had confidence they would attain it.

It would have enough space in which to teach and administrate without crowding.

It would be located where the public could identify and find it.

It would be busy looking, with staff in motion not standing about and would be clean and attractive enough not to repel its public, who would be able to see who and what was where.

Teachers would be teaching and supervisors would be training students interestedly and sorting out all slows.

There would be a pool of people in training to take over new administrative and teaching posts.

The staff would be well paid because they were productive, while Reception would be buzzing with new people.

Pupils would be getting full results in every subject with the ability to apply attained for each. And they would be leaving with high praises, graduating all on fire to make their mark in the world.

The thousand or more actions that made it up would dovetail smoothly one with another.

Such an ideal school would be built by taking what one has and step by step building and smoothing, grooving in and handling each of its functions, with each of its divisions doing more and more of its full job better and better -the results on pupils is the single important line which makes it possible to build the rest.

The ideal school is the image one builds toward. It is the product of the causative actions of many. Anything which is short of an ideal school can be put right.

The end product is not just an ideal school but a revitalized culture already on its way.

With a fresh intake of students from all over the world, Greenfields is once more underway -but this time with a difference. There’s been a “sea change” in the school and the atmosphere has been refreshed and revitalized, with many new projects occurring all over the place.

• Our ICT (Information and Communications Technology) suite has been redesigned and refurbished to new specifications as part of the biggest technological upgrade in the school’s history.

• We’ve reached out into the local community and many ex-Greenfields students are returning to us along with many people who have only just learned what we do.

• The entire organization has been restructured for the 21st century.

• We’re about to release a new prospectus and other new and inspiring literature based on a new and workable approach to education. 

• All the school rules have been re-examined and placed in a new context.

I’ve been around the whole school and am deeply impressed by the quality of what our teachers do on a regular basis and by the way in which new students so rapidly have made friends -but we have only just begun! Over the next year I am going to be engaged on a programme to boost service and quality of delivery to all our children.

All our staff work constantly to improve the educational standards we deliver. Probably one hour of teaching here counts for five or ten hours elsewhere due to the level of care!

21 Favourite Things about Greenfields (in no particular order):

1. The setting on the edge of the Ashdown Forest

2. The relationships between teachers and students

3. Watching new students make friends

4. Being able to teach English in a liberated way

5. Watching other teachers producing good results

6. Lunchtime football! Fantastic!

7. How there are so many comedians in the student body

8. The quietness at times

9. Old books

10. The old old building

11. Working with staff who are dedicated and passionate

12. Ex-students visiting often, beaming with memories

13. Real characters and original personalities

14. The atmosphere when it rains

15. When the deer come in from the forest during winter

16. Fun in the snow

17. Very high competence levels in the Sixth Form

18. Students being considerate to each other

19. How something hilarious happens every day

20. The trees

21. A working technology of study which cuts out so many problems

The Shape of Things to Come

Schools exist at all because they provide something which a large part of the population seem to think they need.

They also tend to reflect the societies of which they are part. 

In olden times, little book learning was needed to manage what was for most people still an agricultural existence. School hours were seasonal: late starts, early closes, time off for helping on the farm and large breaks at harvest time. Education was narrow in scope, determined largely by a single teacher, and focused predominantly on the sorts of skills necessary to get by in life.

There was usually a one-room schoolhouse in the village or town. Teachers taught reading, writing, and basic arithmetic to complement the skills students learned outside school. The need for higher levels of education was minimal. Larger or wealthier families sent one child to the Church to learn higher levels of literacy or “book learning” and everyone else made do without.

Then along came the Industrial Revolution. More and more of the population was settling in cities and going to work in factories. To teach students the basic skills and simple facts they needed for industrial jobs, the first great revolution in schooling took place: schools began to look like factories -large buildings with many classrooms with students sitting in neat rows with the teacher in front. Schools, like the workplaces they sought to emulate, tried to be efficient social institutions turning out identical products. Students learned enough to work at jobs that they would probably keep for much of their lives.

If you recognise that model, you’ll probably realise that it’s still with us.

We still expect schools to look like this industrial model: students sit in rows or similar regimented groupings and listen passively to a teacher at the front of the room. They are all put through curricula aimed at teaching them much the same things; they are all put through an identical, national examination series designed to classify them for work options.

Something like 2% of the population now works in agriculture; about 15% now work in factories. People of today’s generation average six to eight jobs over the course of a career; many of the next generation will require skills that we cannot imagine today. 

About half of all employed people in Britain work with information in some form or other -analyzing information that already exists, generating new information, storing and retrieving information. Soon it’s possible that a major portion of this group will not even work in an office, much less a factory, but at home.

Being able to change one’s career, to adapt to one’s circumstances, and, more importantly, having the ability to modify one’s circumstances to fit one’s needs, are the ways the working world is going.

This calls for a new look at the school as a model, an assessment of what a “post-industrial form of education” might be like. 

Teachers, parents, school administrators, and governments have begun to realize that an entirely new model of education is needed. Recently there has been all kinds of discussion -as there usually is in August, when examination results are released- about new forms of school, new degrees, new diploma, new qualifications. 

But they all operate and think and speculate in the absence of a technology of study. Until that is made widely known, society will be largely stuck with its current teacher-oriented, passive student model.

With a technology of how to learn, all students would have very different measures of learning because most would be prepared to think for a living and be capable of learning many new skills over the course of a lifetime. 

In a society in which anyone could study, the timing and location of education would  need to be more flexible, to reflect and take advantage of changes in the workplace, and the distinction between learning inside school and outside school would fade.

How would this be done?

Part of the answer is technology: new tools offer less limited new ways of learning, of teaching, and of running schools. Computers help to provide new ways for everyone involved in education to be openly accountable to parents, to communities, and to students. But technology by itself is clearly not enough, and computers in schools have too often been used only for drills, for word processing, and for remedial work. There are greater, as-yet-unexplored capabilities in today's information technologies, but to appreciate them we have to start to imagine a new kind of education and a new kind of institution.

Rather than a regimented, teacher-orientated, factory model aimed at churning out similar if not identical products, we need to be re-thinking the relationships between student, knowledge and teacher.

Traditional schools emphasise individual performances and competition and tend to  discourage students from working or even talking together. In the new model of school, classroom experiences would need to emphasize critical thinking, teamwork, negotiation and communication -the skills valued in today's workplace and universally valuable for individual and social well-being.

How do we change the roles of teachers, students and schools?

Students would need to assume many of the functions previously reserved for teachers. In small groups, responsible individual students, already competent in the skills of study and able to spot indications of inattention, could act as peer-tutors for others. 

As they are often the ones most familiar with new technologies, students could lead by example, helping classmates work through problems. Students would need to begin learning from an early age how to communicate and how to assume greater responsibility for their own education. Given the tools of study, this becomes feasible.

Teachers, in contrast, would change from being the repository and source of all knowledge to being guides or mentors who help students navigate through the information made available in various forms. 

They would help students gather and organize information, assist them to judge its value, and guide them to decide how to present it to others. 

Rather than being an authoritative focal point pumping out data to more or less receptive rows of passive listeners, in the presence of a widely known technology of study, teachers would move from group to group and from student to student, helping students stay focused and pushing them to work at the limits of their individual abilities. 

Teachers would share the responsibility for teaching with the students, each of whom would be encouraged to progress at his or her own pace.

In this new model of school, education would look very different than it does in most schools today. Schools might be open all day and all year, with groups of students rotating in and out of session; lessons in the usual form could mutate or disappear to accommodate wider ranges of activities. 

Longer-term projects would cross traditional subject boundaries; schools could become more integrated with businesses, hospitals, or homes. 

Secondary schools may forge new links with external colleges and community institutions, easing the transition from school to work. 

Advanced technology might be used to convey lesson plans, homework, and assessments both to students and to their parents.

Sound unreal?

This could only really be possible if a full understanding of study itself, as a subject in its own right, was readily available. Students could only be trusted not to wander off if they themselves were trained in how to study and how to spot the early warning signs of study problems.

In the presence of that technology of study, new goals would be possible and new schools would take shape.

The ultimate goals of this new model of education would be to create communities of lifelong learners, where knowledge, the use of intellect and cooperation would be highly valued. 

In the one-room school and in today's factory-model schools, the teacher was and is the heart of education; in the brave new world of education, we will have mentors, guides, and brokers to the many worlds of knowledge made accessible by study technology.

Here's an extraordinary thing.

You've probably all heard of certain Victorian authors: Oscar Wilde, creator of The Portrait of Dorian Gray and many other masterpieces; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes; Robert Louis Stevenson, who penned the frightening Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde amongst other things; JM Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan; and Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula.

All of the particular works I've mentioned, originated by these very famous authors, were all written around the same time period -the latter part of the nineteenth century, in England. So far, everything here is common knowledge.

But what you probably didn't know is that all of them knew each other. And they used to frequent many of the same venues in London in the 1880s and 90s. A BBC Radio 4 programme some time ago explored the connections -Gyles Brandreth investigated to find out why these fictional creations remain compelling to this day, what they have in common, and how they could perhaps have influenced each other.

It's one of those amazing stories which the world of literature often throws up -like the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, writers of some of the most popular books of the twentieth century, were close friends.

The interconnections are astonishing. What they can tell us about literature itself and how it works is fascinating. All part of the living world around us...

Welcome to this blog for Greenfields School, a unique place set on the edge of the Ashdown Forest in its own eleven acres of woodland, where we take pride in providing an education for our students which we feel prepares them for life in society like nowhere else in the world.

There’s something special about Greenfields -visitors regularly comment on the distinctive atmosphere here, the uncommon bond which exists between students and between teachers and students. The school has a particular ethos, a rare quality of its own -from my point of view as Head Teacher, it’s a kind of aesthetic, spiritual mood which is right at the heart of what we do, which has been kept alive over time by many people. 

Founded in 1981 by Margaret Hodkin Neal, Greenfields is open to students from all over the world and from all cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. We are regularly visited by ambassadors and government officials from overseas countries.

We are still “family-sized” -every class at Greenfields is small enough for any teacher to be able to hold each student’s progress accurately in his or her mind’s eye- and every year, new students arrive and are assimilated into this “family” -this is the group where Juniors and Seniors play football together, where students from Year 7 hang out with students from Year 11, where everyone knows everyone else by name. This is the school where we struggle to introduce the formality of calling teachers by their surnames or by their titles; it’s the school where firm friendships develop between staff and students which last way beyond the student’s years at school.

This will remain the essence of Greenfields: one big family, usually happy, usually getting on with what needs to be done almost spontaneously.

We provide this friendly, caring and safe environment but the most important factor in our success is our method of study, which ensures that children really understand and can therefore use the information they study. This in turn brings about a state of mind, enabling and empowering individuals to gain far greater affinity with the world around them than they could expect to get without it. While there is room for a student’s love for any subject to grow then our view is that we have more work to do. 

Follow this blog and find out about our latest adventures here! You'll be able to find out what's happening and what's about to happen and feel part of the whole thing if you wish.

I look forward to hearing from you and would be happy to arrange a visit to the school itself.

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Greenfields School blog! Here you'll find out what's happening and about to happen in one of the best schools in the world! 

Greenfields School is more than just a school -it's an experience!

Visit us again soon to catch up with the latest!

Grant Hudson, Head Teacher