Today was a bitter-sweet day. We have had fun, albeit ‘sanitised’. We had karaoke at lunchtime, shirt-signing for Year 11, posters and party poppers from Year 13 and rounders on the field and a lot of cake. We are sad and that sadness was visible on the faces of the students as they elbow-bumped goodbye to us on the gates today, but we know that we will see each other again soon and our community is strong enough to adapt to a different model of community temporarily.

Students in school today changed their passwords so that they can access the school systems from home and the guidance on remote learning is kept up-to-date on the website. From Monday each student will be set work on edulink that they can complete and we would suggest that it might be helpful if they try to stick to a timetable routine to help give them structure. In addition to the edulink work we will also send out a series of daily updates.

 Every day there will be:

• A Headteacher’s video on twitter (first posted today) @MrsSeniorStBen1
• A mindfulness post sent from Mrs Green
• A health/fitness activity
• A daily prayer from our school Chaplain

We will also try to send via student email, links to other posts and activities that our staff will put up to keep in touch, suggest activities and raise a smile.

We thought it might be useful to send a reminder regarding online safety and general safeguarding as we are aware that students may spend more time online than usual in these days. Our website contains a huge amount of information about this including staying safe online.

https://www.st-benedicts.suffolk.sch.uk/page/?title=Safeguarding&pid=59

These will be challenging times for us all and we thank you all for your continued support. As the situation settles, hopefully there will be less need for this type of email and we can prioritise those communications with students and parents that spread joy and sustain us in these times.

Yours in Christ,
Imogen Senior