Welcome Back! After six months away from 7 East 96 I feel tremendously privileged to be writing my first 20-21 Wetherbridge message to you from my Office and we are back! As we finished our staff meeting last night, we commented on the confident and happy start the children have made to the new school year and as we take each day as it comes, the WPNY pupils are continually surprising us. I say this every year, we should never under-estimate your children – they will always prove us wrong and they are certainly doing that! To help the team, I am attending morning break duties this year and I have thoroughly enjoyed spending quality time with the children in the Park and hearing their news. Goodness, we have missed this on every level. There is a new maturity to our returning pupils, and this has been inspiring to see. My heartfelt thanks to my teaching and admin team, whose courage, determination, humour and sheer compassion never cease to amaze me – it is the very foundation of our strong school culture and our success and as Head, I am most grateful to them all for showing up each day with such strength and positivity.
As if the new term could not be better, we have welcomed two new families to the School in the last few days – welcome! I feel sure they will settle-in quickly to our school and we wish you a very happy start to the new school year and your future with us. I have visited and toured the school classrooms and have been delighted to see our remote learners and school children working together. This is not an easy undertaking, but so key in keeping our school community together against the current backdrop. I enjoyed our first Friday Assembly last week and it was our first attempt to dial in all classes and remote learners together as a whole school. It worked well and as normal, the Nursery showed up in full force and best manners! If your son or daughter won an award at the virtual June Prizegiving, these trophies and certificates will now be given out this Friday 18th September in a special award assembly.
Next week, we have our first FAMILY ASSEMBLY from 9.15 to 10am on Friday 25th September. This will be held on Zoom and you are all warmly welcome- invites to follow. There will be music, highlights from the start of term and awards. We hope you enjoy this new way of gathering and so important we keep this special tradition live and enjoyable. It will certainly be different! Keeping up our local NYPD connections, Officer Gibbons and Officer Bobbel will be talking to your children about neighbourhood safety on Zoom on Monday 21st September at 1.45pm which will be fun. Officer Gibbons is an old friend to our school community and ‘keeping safe’ education is his personal mission – we hope the children enjoy their talk.
All that remains, is for me to wish you a happy, inspiring and safe start to the new school year. I have no doubt, this will be out best year yet – we are good at that at WPNY.
