Head Girl!!!!

She got it!

After finally putting herself forward (the story behind that is here) we went off to prize day today with fingers crossed for Molly to get the Head Girlship of her school.
And she did.
Not only that but she got the Netball prize as well. Both were complete surprises to everyone, as the results weren't known to the children beforehand. The head girl award was even voted on by the whole of Years 3-6 in what is meant to be a totally democratic vote. Or possibly as democratic as voting by children in a school ever gets I suppose.

Her reign as Head Girl begins in September. She gets a badge and everything. Very proud. Louise had tears in her eyes as Molly's name was announced. I just had one of those moments where I suddenly realised that in just one short year we'll be back at prize day for the last time and I'll be wondering where my little girl has gone and when she became the grown up young person off to secondary school far too quickly. This huge wave of sadness washed over me as I tried to imagine what it would be like at Bruton mansions with an older Molly. Then I got even more upset as I realised that eventually older Molly turns into left home Molly. Too horrible to think about for too long.

But we're such very, very proud parents right now. And being proud and responsible parents we let her stay up way past her bedtime and watch Torchwood. Then we spent 10 minutes trying to convince her to use her new powers and responsibilities to organise a flashmob in the playground tomorrow; all the children stand still and start chanting "we are coming.... we are coming". Being fr more sensible than us, Molly said that was stupid and she wasn't going to do it. Smart child.

Today - a quick run through of triumph and misery....

What a horrible / brilliant / horrible day it has been..... Dropped Molly off at school; she's really nervous / excited about the prize day this afternoon where she's got to do a trumpet performance and is up for the position of Head Girl.

Then along to my school. Generally an indication of how utterly crap or good my day is going to be is a combination of how far I get past reception before someone says "Richard.... such and such is looking for you" and how many frantic pleas for help are on the whiteboard in the ICT suite. Today we had both. Network trouble. Which first looked simpler to solve, then I realised it was happening across most, but not all of the school.

Devastated, I phoned Louise to tell her I wouldn't be making prize day. The first such thing I've missed since I missed Molly's first sports day ages ago in Birmingham. Pledged then that I wouldn't do it again. Utterly sickened that I might miss her getting head girl.

If you have a look through various posts about my job, you should be able to get the idea that I'm pretty damn good at what I do, generally making ICT easier for pupils and staff and essentially making our kids digitally literate. But one thing I do fall down on is the hard techy network knowledge. What I do know is okay, but I don't know enough.

However, when I investigated the server cupboard and one bank of switches is flashing on and off like it's having it's own 4th July fireworks celebration, even I can figure out that this is not good.
Take cables out. No change.
Swap cables round. No change.
Turn it off. All switch lights go out.
Turn it back on. 4th Of July all over again.
Being not completely stupid I realise this is more than I can deal with. And I'm probably going to need a new switch thingy. Very handy ICT techy folks we used before are close by on a job and actually pop in within the hour - do everything I did and a bit more and eventually disconnect the switch box and can't get it to power on again. Swapping all the leads over to the other, smaller switch box solves the problems and off they go pledging to bring new switch box tomorrow or Wednesday.

This is great news; a hardware problem that's not my fault and network downtime that I couldn't do anything about.
Took until half 11 to get this sorted and organise the remaining switch box so that admin, myself and the ict suite have connections working.
Then a manic rush to get loads of Year 6 stuff printed and lots of reports reprinted. Seems a lot of staff didnt take my advice about proofreading the work to heart. Oh well. It may be a surprise next year when we limit their printing each term - some of them will run out after a couple of weeks.

It's quarter past one and I'm meant to be at the prize giving by half one. Manic rush to make sure everyone knows I've done everything I can until we get the new hardware and then out the door. Race to prize day (within the speed limit of course. No more speeding fines for me) and settle down in the chair just as the head comes on for her introductory speech.

The very act of finally stopping means the hideously bad headache finally takes hold and I sit for the next two hours with my head throbbing painfully.

And yes - Molly did get the Head Girl award - see here. What a wonderful girl we have!

Head Girl? Fingers crossed

Tonight (last night? it's 1am Tuesday as I write this, to me it's still Monday night) we found out Molly has been put forward as a nominee for head girl at her school. Wow. Proud.

But there's a rather convoluted story behind it all. For the origins of it you really have to go back to Molly's first schol in Birmingham. Perhaps the nicest thing the headmistress ever said to us about Molly (and she said plenty of nice things) was that if they did ever decide to have head boys and girls Molly would be the one she'd pick for it. That was just lovely.

So obviously, as it's the end of Year 5 for Molly now in her new school where they do have head boys and head girls we started to think about it again. Only to have our hopes dashed by Molly coming home one night and telling us that they'd been asked to put themselves forward if they wanted to be considered and she'd been too scared to put her hand up. This is one of the character traits of Molly we're trying to change - she can be very, very nervous about putting herself forward for anything. If the teacher would have picked her she'd have no problem with it, but ask her to put her hand up and she'll think about it, think about it some more and then miss out because the moment has gone. We talked about it; Louise, Molly and I and she decided that she had wanted to go for it after all and was quite upset at how disappointed we were about it.

Anyway, we think the chance has gone. But it seems not. Molly's on the shortlist anyway. Maybe the teacher made a mistake. Maybe she put her name down anyway. Who knows. But tomorrow she has to give a presentation to her year 5/6 class and to the year 3/4 class about why she would make a really good head girl.

Which is why she insisted on writing out her speech/presentation tonight and performing it. Then rewriting/reperforming it. and then doing it again. and again. and again. Louise and I deliberately didn't chip in much, just guiding and suggesting. So the speech is all her own work.

We'll find out at prize day in July. Fingers crossed everybody.