Mindfulness and Wellbeing
Mindfulness and Wellbeing are increasingly important facets of modern life with all its associated strains, stresses and pressure. The article below gives a little advice and guidance which might prove useful to us all.
Mindfulness: some thoughts
Mindfulness is about paying deliberate attention to what’s happening to your mind and body in the present time, not worrying about what you did ‘wrong’ yesterday.
When you practise mindfulness, and become fully aware of the present and the sensations around you, you wake up from auto-pilot mode and can fully cherish life. Your thoughts will become calmer, too. Practising mindfulness can help you appreciate the best bits of life.
“Mindfulness is about observation without criticism; being compassionate with yourself,” says Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World. “When unhappiness or stress hover overhead, rather than taking it all personally, you learn to treat them as if they were black clouds in the sky, and to observe them with friendly curiosity as they drift past. In essence, mindfulness allows you to catch negative thought patterns before they tip you into a downward spiral. It begins the process of putting you back in control of your life.”
Mindfulness can enable us to really enjoy the joyful moments of life which we can so easily miss.
It’s really important to take care of yourself.
We can practise mindfulness by simply sitting still and becoming aware of ourselves.
The brain can act like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. This negativity bias may have helped humans survive, but when it comes to modern life we need to consciously rebalance. When you feel stressed and anxious, try to press the pause button and consciously calm yourself.
Mindfulness doesn’t stop stress, but it helps you catch it and settle yourself.
Reading Volunteers
On the afternoon of January 18th 2017, another cohort of our year 12 students went to Handsworth Association of Schools Conference Centre, adjacent to Welford Primary School, to be trained as ‘Reading Volunteers’. The workshop entailed them working in groups to practice the best methodologies to support year 1 and 2 students with their reading skills. All fifteen students engaged in a variety of activities to share ideas and build their self-confidence. A number of case studies involving a teacher supporting a child with reading a book were looked at and students mapped out the best strategies to pitch their support at an appropriate level to the children.
This workshop was organised to help prepare our students to go out (in pairs) to an assigned primary school, every Wednesday afternoon, and support a minimum of 4 children with their reading skills. Through this programme, not only do our students give back to their community, they also learn new life-long skills such as how to speak to a child, how to teach a new skill to a child, patience, perseverance and many more.
Mr Ahmed
D&T News
Please click on the link below to read an article which was published in the DATA Magazine recently which features innovative work undertaken at HGS by Ms Hill. The HGS D&T team are at the forefront of Innovating D&T: West Midlands.
Winter Concert 2016
Around 70 students descended upon the Ladywood Arc on the 15th December 2016 for HGS’s Annual Winter Concert. The winter concert provides an exciting opportunity for our very talented musicians to perform in one of our cities best venues. This year was particularly memorable for it was our 5th year using the venue.
Our concerts at HGS always provide a vast array of different musical genres from the classical and romantic era’s all the way up to the modern genres we are used to today. The winter concert is no exception. Festive music found its way into the programme with the school Orchestra performing ‘Walking in the Air’ from the Snowman, we heard a performance of ‘sleigh ride’ from our Woodwind Ensemble as well as tutti renditions of Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas, which provide the audience with an opportunity to participate in the concert. Film Music is also quite popular at our concerts with the Senior Keyboard Ensemble performing ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and our Woodwind Quartet playing ‘Somewhere in my Memory’ from Home Alone. In addition there were several solos and duets throughout the night. These included Balkaar Bhopal playing the Waltz in C sharp minor by Chopin, Isaac Minto playing Mr Benn by D.Lamont on the Clarinet with Karl and Robert Frater playing Andate by Antonio Vivaldi on the Guitar. Our current Young Musician of the Year Josef Feiven played Movements I and II of the Camille Saint-Seans Morceau De Concert for Horn and Piano.
The concert was a fantastic celebration of the musicians we are fortunate to have at Handsworth Grammar School and I hope that you will be able to attend the Instrumental Progress Evening on Thursday 16th March 2017, HGS’s Young Musician of the Year on Thursday 4th May 2017 and the Summer Concert (13th July).
Chinese New Year
Handsworth Grammar School is extremely excited to be celebrating the Chinese New Year, on Tuesday 31st January. This is a great opportunity for students and staff alike to discover a new culture, and to embrace the diversity of our world. This event was brought to life by the students through the School Council, of which I have the privilege to oversee. It is always a pleasure to see these ideas come into reality. I hope to see everyone in the canteen, enjoying the delicious Chinese food being served. On behalf of the School Council and Senior Prefect Team, I’d like to wish you a happy Chinese new year!
Best regards,
Seth Griffiths, Chair of the School Council.
Social Media and Young People
In the last few days two very good articles on the use of Social Media have been published on the BBC Education website. Please see the links below and take some time to read them carefully as all our children are impacted to a greater or lesser extent by Social Media and the wider Internet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38508888
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38529437
Extreme Weather Guidance
Should there be the need to close the School due to bad weather a notice will be posted on the Website, Facebook and Twitter by 6 am and a text message will be sent to both Staff and Parents. Please be vigilant and patient.
Trussell Trust Foodbank
Handsworth Grammar School donated over 9,000 items of food to Reverend Roger Collins from the Trussell Trust Foodbank. This donation was made possible by the hard work of Ms Elaine Brown and her form and the wider generosity of the Handsworth Grammar School Community.
Computer Science at Warwick University
On the 7th December, 10 students from Year 12 and Year 13 attended multiple lectures about “Computer Science in Action” at Warwick University. The inspirational day of Computer Science demonstrated cutting edge fields from Artificial Intelligence, software development and algorithms to smart cities. The day also featured a special session with hints and tips for examination success. Five renowned speakers from universities, industries and the media revealed computer science at its very best and we all had a whole lot of fun along the way.
We arrived at Warwick at 9.45am and were given the opportunity to peruse the differing architecture as well as the buzzing campus life with many students rushing to attend their next lecture. We then entered Warwick Arts centre and took our front row seats within Butterworth Lecture Hall.
Dr Matthew Leeke from the University of Warwick gave us a fascinating insight into Smart Cities of the future and explained how one of his students had created an algorithm and app to help people become more energy cost efficient by tracking and predicting future global positioning co-ordinates. Dr Emma Byrne then talked about recently voiced fears that Artificial Intelligence could be about to make a great and dangerous leap forward and why this is already more advanced than most people realise!
Lunch at the university allowed us to take in more campus life and clearly represented how dynamic student life is at Warwick. We then had an inspirational lecture from Graham Cluley who helped develop Dr Solomon’s antivirus toolkit and he explained an astonishing fact that over 400,000 pieces of malware are created on a daily basis.
We were then given the most important open problem to solve in Computer Science by Leslie Goldberg from the University of Oxford, P versus NP algorithm, which carries a £1m prize currently. Our final thought provoking presentation was from Dr Conor McBride of Strathclyde University who persuaded us that functional programming is the future of Computer Science and why we must be involved. Altogether, we had a motivational experience and would like to thank Warwick University for inviting us as well as Mr. Hawkins who helped put the trip together.
Inder Panesar, 12MMI.
