the long goodbye

The Year 11 pupils at school are now on study leave preparing for their GCSE exams. Before they departed, the wonderful Quantock House and Sports Captains (Eloise+Demi+Dan+George) wanted to present me with a farewell gift from the whole House – even though I don’t actually retire for another eight school weeks. First of all they’d contrived to organise a whole Quantock House photograph so they could present me with a really good framed copy. Then they encouraged all the House tutor groups to contribute comments/greetings/drawings for a brilliantly entertaining “Thank you Mr Broadway love from Quantock" retirement book. There are lots of really lovely, heartfelt notes of thanks including these particular gems: “Thank you for being a good head teacher” (if only they’d paid me accordingly); “you were there when no one else was”; “you were my favourite teacher” (even though I didn’t teach); “heroic and stunning” (really?); “I hope you get a big villa” (the football team or a palace?); “thank you so much for helping when I had my stomach pains”; “no one will forget you” (is this a threat?); “I will never forget your great handwriting and brilliant fun attitude” (a wonderful combination!); “thank you for looking after me through everything”; “I would never have felt welcome without you”; “thank you for being there for me with my ups and downs”; “thank you for supporting me and showing me the light at the end of the tunnel” (did I?) and, finally, “you are, and shall always remain, a legend and by far the most amazing Assistant Head (?)… words cannot describe how much you will be missed”.
Money can’t buy this sort of stuff… very humbling (as well as funny, sometimes) and it reminds you of all the good things about working with young people in education (of course, I could list a lot of bad things too!).
It now feels wrong to have to go on working for another WHOLE term!
Photo: the cover of my lovely, big retirement book.