Starfish X Gatekeeper Advent

20 days of noticing others. 5 days of remembering yourself.

In the busiest, fullest, most emotional month of the school year, we wanted to create something gentle. Something real. Something human.
Not another checklist.
Not another initiative.
Not another thing to “deliver.”

Just one small, relational action a day; something you can’t measure, track, or log on a spreadsheet, but that changes the way people feel in your presence.

I'm reminding myself:
The magic of school life is rarely found in the big moments.

It lives in the tiny, almost invisible ones.
A soft smile.
A warm greeting.
A pause before responding.
A child feeling seen.
A colleague feeling held.
A whisper of encouragement at exactly the right time.

You can’t evidence them.
You can’t quantify them.
You won’t win an award for them.
Still, they shape belonging in ways data will never be able to describe.

This Advent is our way of honouring that.

Every day, from the 1st to the 20th, we’ll share one action, something tiny, intentional, and deeply human, that nurtures:
🎄Belonging
🎅Empathy
☃️Trust
❄️Connection
❤️Relational safety
🎁And the quiet joy of being noticed

These aren’t tasks. They’re invitations.
Small reminders to step out of autopilot and back into presence.

Then, once term ends, when the gates close and the corridors fall quiet, the Advent turns inward.
Five days devoted to you:
💤To rest.
🪞To reflection.
🏋‍♀️To releasing the weight of the term.
🏡To arriving home with your humanity intact.
💃To finding joy in the season without guilt or exhaustion clinging to your edges.

The work we do all year is heavy.
The heart we lead with is tender.
You deserve to end December not depleted, but gently realigned.

This Advent is a celebration of everything that cannot be measured but always, always matters:
Belonging.
Spirit.
Joy.
Presence.
Kindness.
Being human, first and always.

One small action a day.
One tiny spark of magic.
That’s all it takes.

Day 2

2 Dec 2025 06:40

I can’t tell you how many times I have practised the pause; not because it always comes naturally but because without it, I am not the version of myself I want to offer the world.

In the rush of a busy end of term, the overwhelm of a new one, and the blur of everything in between, there are moments when the words that leave my mouth don’t sound the way they did in my head.

They come out sharper, or heavier, or simply wrong. They land in ways I never intended. They aren’t as kind as I hoped they’d be.
The pause protects me, yes, but it also protects the people I’m trying to care for.

It is self-preservation and self-regulation.
A tiny moment of choosing who I want to be, before I choose what I want to say. Whether we realise it or not, we are modelling it every day.

To the young people we love.
To the colleagues we lean on.
To the communities we hold in all their complexity.

We teach them far more by how we move through the world, than by any advice we give. A culture of belonging, empathy, trust, inclusion; it isn’t built on perfect responses.

It isn’t the absence of mistakes.
It’s the safety to make them, repair them, learn from them, and not lose yourself along the way.

Day 2 is simple:
Pause. Just for a breath. Long enough to return to yourself, before you return to others. That tiny moment can change everything. ☃️

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