Growing up straight

I’m continuing to plot and scheme for a 5 day training program for our teachers starting next Wednesday. This means that I’ve spent a lot of my time glued to the laptop sourcing information and inspirational material to make the training go well. I remember my own experiences as a teacher when ‘the management’ announced some new initiative that everybody needed to be trained up on. In poacher turned gamekeeper mode I find myself in the challenging, (but none the less enjoyable), position of trying to develop motivational and inspirational professional development for our team. Our overall aim is to make sure that the children in the school reach their full potential and are equipped and motivated to become outstanding members of their community– no mean feat when you consider the home backgrounds that most of them come from. For a school it’s not a particularly unusual aim but when you start to dive into the detail of what it really involves it’s a real challenge. I’ve been reading some recent books from the USA about schools that have achieved extremely good results with children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds. The Bible tells us that if you “Point your kids in the right direction - when they're old they won't be lost.” (Message version). A simple but profound truth. Challenging enough in the modern nuclear family. A huge task for the average school but hugely rewarding when you get it right.

In the real world of the great outdoors it’s been an encouraging day on the self-sufficiency front today. Our goats are now so tame that they jump up to greet you when you enter the pen. They are also growing noticeably fatter. We postponed a management team meeting this afternoon so that we could have an all hands on deck attack on harvesting the last of our green grams, (mung beans). Net result was two and a half sacks of pods to extract the green grams from. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are also coming on well – we have about five hundred tomato plants and nearly all of them have tomatoes growing on them. Duncan, our farm manager, is typically understated when talking about them. He doesn’t think they have grown that much this week. He did point out that he is in the greenhouse everyday so probably doesn’t notice the growth as much as the rest of us. We also have an impressive looking butternut squash patch. Thanks to the keen attention of Duncan and our Agriculture College students and teachers our farm is rapidly turning into a great celebration of all things that grow. Watching nature in action at such close quarters and, for me, on such a relatively large scale really is an amazing experience.