A Year in Yester

After a very busy, but extremely enjoyable week away, we’re all back to school again. It’s time to reflect on how things went, both for the class, and the teachers!

For me personally, it was undoubtedly the most enjoyable week I have spent at Benmore, both as a teacher and as a child, which is of course many years ago now. The main reasons for this were the fact that this year’s class showed they were an excellent bunch of children who gelled well, worked well together, mixed well with children from other schools who were at the Centre at the same time, and most importantly, had great fun! Perhaps the most pleasing aspect for me, and for Miss Stuart too, was the fact that it was very obvious as the week went on that some of the class who we might have had slight worries about whether they would participate in all the activities, or enjoy them, clearly did. The rise in confidence of some children was very pleasing. I was really happy to see all the class attempting all the activities, even if they weren’t sure if they would enjoy them. An example was the climbing and abseiling, which some were very unsure about beforehand. Once they had done it though, most were raving about it!

The weather was mixed- but that didn’t stop the whole class jumping into lochs and rivers, even when it was quite cool and wet outside. It amazed me how many children wanted to jump into Loch Eck even on Thursday, after coming out of the caves!

The vast majority of the children thought the food was excellent. One child even made comment that the meals were better than anything he had experienced at home!

The disco on Thursday evening gave the groups from all the schools the chance to let their hair down and mix with each other, which they did very well. On Friday morning it was nice to see many exchanging phone numbers with newly made friends from the other schools.

As I said earlier in the week, it was great to be able to convey what was happening each day to the parents and others at the school via the blog. That was definitely a great thing to do, even if it meant quite a bit more work! The overwhelmingly positive comments proved that it was appreciated- so thanks again to all who took the time to read our blog and comment on it.
Mr Purves