Well done to Lisa He

Warmest congratulations to Lisa He (S6) who was one 15 candidates chosen to represent the UK Chinese Youth  following a selection event held in October in Edinburgh.

Lisa will take part in an ‘all expenses paid’ excursion to Hua Qiao University in Xiamen, China during the Christmas holiday. As part of this Lisa will be taking part in a competition with others from around the world to demonstrate her understanding of Chinese Culture and Language.

Earlier this year, whilst in S5, Lisa gained 7 excellent Highers, including Mandarin. 

Best wishes to Lisa on her trip and for flying the JGHS flag!

Former pupils

There is a lot of correspondence in and out of the school at this time of the year but this email of appreciation from a former pupil caught my eye. Thanks Imran for taking thetime to write.

Dear All three of my CDT teachers,

I know it’s a busy time for you three with Christmas around the corner,  so therefore I will keep it nice a easy read .

 Just an e-mail to say Thank You for teaching me CDT and graphic common in my school days at JGHS, with the skills u have taught me I am in my final year in Interior Design at HW uni.  I know I should go back to my dissertation, but its good to have a break.  With all the success I have had I did not forget about you three, and it’s because of you three I am here.  I just want to give big thanks to you.

I hope you have a great Christmas and don’t stay up to late marking test papers,

Hope to see you again.

Imran

Easy Fundraising

Please support JGHS when shopping online

 

If you are doing some Christmas shopping online, or planning a January sales spending spree,  please register as a JGHS Parent Council supporter at http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/jghsparentcouncil. Over 2,700 retailers are signed up. It's a very simple way to raise money for the school at no extra cost to you. Many thanks.

November newsletter

The November Newsletter is now on the school website.

This time of year is a very busy time of year for all of us. In addition to all the usual and amazing things that take place on a daily basis in our classrooms, teachers and pupils are busy in organising a wide range of activities. Our extra-curricular sports continue to take place at various venues including Meadowbank, where the staff have been wonderful in supporting us during the rebuilding of our new school.
I never cease to be amazed at the range of talent we have in our school. In the past week alone, I have enjoyed praising pupils for their successes in a Maths problem solving competition at Glasgow Science Museum, John Byrne Awards, where, once again, we won and had a highly commended entry as well as being were overall winner. Over the past few weeks pupils have led assemblies and shared their varied achievements with others.
Our music department has been extraordinarily busy in the last few weeks as we prepare for our annual Christmas concert which is to be held in the Usher Hall on the evening of Thursday 18 December at 7 Pm. Tickets are available from the Usher Hall box office. (http://www.usherhall.co.uk). On that evening, upwards of 500 of our pupils will be joined by over 100 of the P7 children from our associated primaries. I am sure that this will be another wonderful occasion for us to come together and appreciate the musical diversity and talent we have in our school.

Stress management

A Psychologist walked around a room while teaching Stress Management to an audience.
As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "Half empty or Half full" question.
Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired:
"How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter.
It depends on how long I hold it.
If I hold it for a minute,
it's not a problem.
If I hold it for an hour,
I'll have an ache in my arm.
If I hold it for a day,
my arm will feel numb and paralyzed.
In each case,
the weight of the glass doesn't change,
But
The longer I hold it,
the heavier it becomes.
She continued,
"The Stresses and Worries in Life , are like that Glass of Water...
Think about them for a while and nothing happens.
Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt.
And
If you think about them all day long,
you will feel paralyzed –
incapable of doing anything....!!!"
Remember to put the Glass Down

Transfer window for teachers?

Over the past few days I have had several discussions with colleagues about teachers not being able to move from one education job to another other than at specified times in the year. This would have the obvious advantage of disruption to pupils' learning being minimised and would mirror the arrangement in professional football. In to flight football clubs can only transfer players between each other during certain times of the year, referred to as 'transfer windows'. For example, the lead up to the examination period in May would be an obvious time to avoid. I understand that some private schools ensure that contracts always run for a whole session. If this arrangement can work in the world of professional football, could it work in the world of education? Are there examples anywhere in the world, where such a model operates successfully?

Where is home? - Reflections by a young Lewis girl.

Some say home is where the heart is, but I think home is different things to different people.  I think, although I cannot speak for us all, that home has a particular meaning for us islanders: for the Leòdhasachs, the Hearachs, the Uibhisteachs - The Hebrideans.

For those of us born and brought up in the Outer Hebrides, home can never really be anywhere else.  There is a connection here, not only to family and the house you grew up in, but to the island itself, its land, its wide skies, its culture and history.  We may have been gone for decades, lived across the globe, sailed the seven seas, and we will still call this island chain ‘home.’

As photographer Ian Lawson writes in his stunningly beautiful photographic book on the islands, From The Land Comes the Cloth: “The indigenous people of the Outer Hebrides feel a deep sense of place, a connection to the land on which they live and make a living that is rarely broken no matter how far from home they might travel.”

I have to admit that I didn’t always appreciate the wonders of the Western Isles.  Despite reveling in the freedom as a child, as a teenager I couldn’t wait to escape – and I’m ashamed to say I thought of it in those terms – to the bright lights of a big city, the coffee shops and boutiques and bustling streets.

It was never my plan to come home, to come back to the Hebrides, but after leaving for university on adventures that took me to China, America, and elsewhere in Scotland, I found myself back where I started – and now I couldn’t be more grateful for that unexpected turn of events.

Living in Lewis as an adult has made me appreciate, and love, the islands so much more than I ever thought possible.  I love the tangy scent of sea salt that fills the air when it’s damp.  The smell of that (now all too rare) puff of peat smoke from a chimney.  The sight by the roadside of yellow gorse against green grass and blue skies. The croaky sound of a corncrake in summer.  The ever-changing hues of the moors, from orange to brown to purple and everything in between.  The starry night skies that seem impossible in scope.

I love a good Gaelic joke, or the sound of sentence said with a Stornoway twang.  The smell of Harris Tweed that transports me to childhood.  The view of Point as you drive across the Braighe on a summers day; and the reverse, when the rest of the island is laid out before you like a perfect painting.  Those sands of Luskentyre – and Seilebost and Horgabost and Nisabost and Scarista – that take my breath away every single time.

I love the sense of shared history and community, where everyone (or so it seems) knows not just you and your parents, but of your grandparents and great-grandparents too.  I love knowing that where I walk and work and live today, so did generations of my family before me.

There’s nothing like starting the day by popping into the coffee shop where the ladies behind the counter (and even the other early morning regulars) know exactly who you are and where you’re from; nothing quite like venturing into adulthood with friends you’ve known for forever.  It’s heart-warming, belonging to a place like this.

I’m leaving soon – very soon – to set up a second home, in one of those big cities with bright lights that I dreamt of as a teenager.  But as the poetry and prose of islanders and Gaels long gone before me proves, my heart will always belong to the Hebrides.

Lady Audley's Secret

On Friday 5 December, our drama society performed the 1863 melodrama 'Lady Audley's Secret,' by C H Hazlewood from the novel by Mary Elizabeth Bradden, and, very cleverly, as the play-within-the-play, staged Leon Garfield's compression of Shakespeare's ' A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

I thoroughly enjoyed this superb Jghs performance in the company of John Macleod and 100 others in our Darroch annexe. Some seriously talented youngsters on stage in this wonderful adaptation of two classics.

Female Genital Mutilation

The poster speaks for itself. We must all work together to put an end to this horrific practice.

A question was asked

Earlier today, Allan Crosbie - our Head of English and an award winning poet - shared poems with us that were written by our S6 pupils around the time of the referendum on 19 September. I was astonished and delighted at the quality and the sophistication of what was produced. Here is one example from Roise, who is one of our Gaelic speakers.






A question was asked
A question was asked and with it came
antique scrawls on a small piece of paper,
an X to mark centuries of debate.
A lifetime of conflict in two empty squares.
People filed and people filled and still they could not hear

Dòchasach

Yet there came to light identity and understanding.
Grabbing the shovel we dug up roots
And asked about our heritage.
Who we are?

Screaming drunken choruses of flowers
Wearing skirts and called colours.
Dancing to nameless tunes.
Can we answer?

A question was asked and we forgot ourselves.
The wrong answer whimpered hope and we gave up.

I hear the whisper Dòchasach

A dying language,
An unidentified culture.

Our colours are fading
As Hume watches with his fluorescent hat
And people curse the cobblestones.

I hear the fading Dòchasach.

By Roise Nic An Bheatha

The meaning of success?

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”
The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then?”
The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce a stock market launch, sell your company to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions! Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”