The coldest city on earth is a place called Yakutsk, in Siberia.  Average winter temperatures are minus 55 celsius, and can be as low as minus 70.   If you turn off your car engine and leave it outside, the engine will freeze and you won’t move it until Spring, mobile phones don’t work outside and if you were to be foolish enough to touch anything with your bare skin, you may well lose a finger or two. 

But I swear that Yakutsk wasn’t as cold as it has been at times this week here in school.  The cold snap, whilst forecast, has certainly come as a shock to the system this week and, as I have explained in my letter sent to all parents this week, we have found ourselves in the position of reacting to events rather than planning for them.  That is never a good position to be in and I hope that the changes made towards the end of the week will have made things more comfortable for students and reassured parents too. Thank you for support with this. 

Despite the cold snap, the students have responded with resilience and toughness this week.  As I told the students in Years 9 and 10 this week, the easiest thing to do on mornings like we have seen this week, is to turn over again in bed and give in to a sniffle.  But our students are tougher than that and I was delighted to see such high levels of attendance this week, with no discernible difference to the norm. 

One of the things we have spoken to Key Stage 4 students about recently is the importance of the choices that we make when we are young, for they undoubtedly inform the choices we will be able to make when we are older. 

Choosing to attend school, be punctual and work hard is not easy; it is hard.  But it is worth it for the options it opens for us in later life and the choices it presents us when we become adults.  To demonstrate this, we played the Marshmallow Experiment video clip, which I have shared with you before.  This explores the concept of Deferred Gratification – whereby those people who can resist immediate gratification are the people who demonstrate the most success in life.  We see this in sports – those people who sacrifice time and energy to train to become great athletes; we see it in the arts – those people who nurture a talent through deliberate practice to master a musical instrument or dancing or other forms of art.  And we can see it in other walks of life, where the effort we expend in studying hard, revising and practising enables us to perform well in our exams, and in our careers. 

I am an occasional runner and sometimes people ask me where my motivation comes from, to which I reply that I don’t have any motivation to run.  I hate it.  It hurts.  But I have just about enough discipline to get my trainers on and go for a run from time to time.  I do not have as much discipline as many others who run further and faster.  But I understand that if I were to rely on motivation, I will never go running.  Discipline is what is needed.  And that is what we also tell our students.  It is important. 

Whilst sitting in my office one night after school this week, I heard the sound of Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody drifting from a nearby classroom.  It was the sound of some of our musicians rehearsing for the Christmas Concert where they will perform at the All Saints Church in Hessle in December.  Suddenly, we have gone from mid-Autumn to Christmas.  This time of year often catches me out – I have agreed to put our tree up next weekend, even though it only seems a few weeks since we put it away! 

Needless to say, our weekends are now given over to planning for Christmas, seeing friends, shopping and planning.  Although tonight we are planning to watch Blitz – a new movie just released on Apple TV.  Parts of this were filmed in Hull in 2023 and my daughter was enlisted into the cast as an extra in the scenes filmed in Paragon Station.  So we will be watching keenly hoping that she appears on screen – her first movie role! 

Whatever you are doing this weekend, stay warm and dry and thank you for your ongoing support.   

Mr Groak

Headteacher