Shine on you crazy parents

Way back last September when I was involved in a very enthusiastic planning meeting for the second year of Paganel's 'Change School' program we talked about lots of ideas that involved parental or community engagement. So why is it that today, on my final session at Paganel this year, I find myself for the first time actually working with parents? The short answer is that those parental and community engagement activities happened, but didn't involve me.
Today's session with four parents and one member of staff was a real joy! We were creating a video record of Paganel's 'Shine Day' and all the activities that the pupils were getting involved with. We started by watching the shine day film I helped year-six pupils to make last year. We went on to a whistle stop run through of video production, interviewing skills, visual composition and story-telling before going to work. It's that incredible mix of skills, all running in parallel that make film-work so powerful as an educational process.
The group worked very hard throughout the day and produced a rush edit that was shown in a whole school assembly at about 2:30. They were all enthusiastic and remained so throughout the day, and they all want to come back to finish the edit after summer.
Just as well today ended on a high as I then got a phone call from a member of staff from another school regarding a DVD that I'd worked all hours to get ready in time for their end of year show. Not to thank me, just to point out all the ways in which they felt the work fell short of their expectations. You know, if they'd have been telling me that the children weren't happy with the work, I would have felt much more concerned.