On 19th April 2024 we held a Vision and Value’s relaunch. We welcomed parents, governors and community members to visit school to see the children’s art work that depicted our ‘thriving community’ and then to join us in a Church service to mark the event. It was a wonderful celebration.
The journey to this day started long before now, with previous cohorts of children, heads of school, exec heads, governors and parents all coming together to decide on the words that would encapsulate what is driving St Mary’s – what the ‘Vision’ was and what ‘values’ were at the heart of everyday life.
What was decided on, is a simple yet powerful set of statements that we all agree on and are living by.
The values of ‘Love, Strength and Faith’
And our vision: ‘Being the best we can be, in a thriving Community, following the example of Jesus’.
Important words but only as impactful as people’s understand of them, if they remember them and how they demonstrate them in their actions.
For this reason during the week leading up to this celebration day in school we explored the theological roots of these words and phrases with the children and made sense of them through a range of media.
The glorious artwork that has been created in our school hall was created over two days with artist Jo from ‘Schools without walls’ working with all our children.
Jo took the idea of an individuals journey through life, where the path maybe hard (see the textured path on the outside cover of the book), starting in many different locations (the outside represents ‘a city’ but traveling and moving along a smoother path the closer you get to the Church. The individual houses and lives, created by each child, coming together to create the ‘community’. The houses on their own were purposefully created in muted colours to further enhance the colourful focus – on the Church.
The children and Jo, whilst making the final piece, talked about the way stained glass windows tell stories through imagery and in a similar way our ‘book’ tells the story through the picture created.
The three paths to he church entrance are inscribed with the three values of the school: Love, Strength and Faith. Whilst the main route, direction or trajectory holds the school value statement: ‘Being the best we can be, in a thriving community, following the example of Jesus’.
The children then spent a day in their ‘houses’ working across all ages groups together, to become the expert in one of the three values – to create a drama performance demonstrating their understanding, and presenting this to us. We also shared our new vision song. Our wonderful teacher Mrs Fry and fabulous friend of the school Frances Rowberry put together this song and the children and staff have loved learning it and performing it regularly in school.
Vision and Values Week
The children have spent the week reflecting on and our amended Vision and the values which underpin this.
They prepared a 3D Art representation of our Vision, then in houses planned how they could present each Value to rest of the school and wider community, through our collective church service on Friday.
Rev Julie pulled the service together gathering and connecting varying members of our community, highlighting that each of us brings something to the community.
We all have different strengths and collectively that strength is stronger than the sum of the component parts.
If we garner that collective strength, through love and faith, the distance we can cover grows and our community is allowed to flourish.
Staff, governors and parents have been working hard to outline our whole school vision. This has resulted in a vision that drives St Mary’s core values of ‘love, strength and faith’, but now ensures that all members of our school community can clearly define what our vision is and what the core values mean, and how we can all use them to guide us. To celebrate our new vision, we had a launch day on Monday 11th March. Parents and Governors joined us to celebrate the bible stories linked to the core values of Love, Strength and Faith and hear our amazing new vision song. The children then enjoyed a pause morning of activities centered around our core values.
Vision Song
