Christmas market and that warm fuzzy feeling

"You only realise what a school ethos is when you go into a school that doesn't have one." The words of the former Deputy Headmaster at my old secondary school during one of his assemblies came flooding back to me on Wednesday. But this wasn't because I was observing a school without any ethos, quite the opposite, I was seeing and feeling it in spades.

Preparations for the Christmas Market at Mittelschule Schmiedeberg had been underway for a couple of months beforehand, deciding who was doing what and so-forth. However all the laying out of the tables and setting up obviously happened on the day. School finished early at 12:30, in order for there to be time for people to have a break and then set up. Each class was doing one part of the Christmas Market, and everything was meticulously planned, with each stand being in a specific place. The pupils duly returned at about 2pm, in time for final preparations for the start at 2:30, then it started raining. Now while plan A had been meticulously planned, plan B was non-existent, resulting in what I like to call organised chaos, as teachers and pupils went to action stations and started moving tables, benches, and food inside to the little hall inside from the pupils entrance. The melee of children, tables, teacher ans chairs took quite a while to subside, and once it had the Christmas Market was already well and truly in full-swing.

Parents, grandparents, local villagers and friends of the school were all bustling around looking at the crafts, buying gifts, drinking mulled wine and eating chocolate apples. But before I could properly stuck into food and drink, we were all summoned by the headteacher into the sports' hall for a nativity play of sorts. It involved pupils from our partner school in the Czech Republic, who acted it out, while it was narrated in Czech and German by both pupils from the Czech school and our school respectively. After this there was a dancing contest between two of class sevens. I didn't vote because being a fluffy lefty liberal nerd I didn't think it was nice to select a winnern from two classes.

After the dancing it was back round the stalls for more eating and drinking. I quickly found the disadvantage of having gone into most of the classes at the school; that all the pupils seemed to know who I was, and consequently came up to me trying to sell their wares. I ended up buying a glass of mulled wine (twice), a school calender, the pupils' school magazine Der Spind, some dough ball things, a Christmas card, some hot chocolate, and some chocolate grapes. The last three I bought from the stand being run by mentor teacher's class, well they are the nicest class to teach, and they seem to like me (can't think why), so how could I refuse? And having supervised them making the chocolate apples and grapes, I suppose I had to really. Although they weren't having much luck with shifting their hot chocolate, the price was dropping faster than John Prescott's pants (oh dear the imagery).

I was quite enjoying the walking around the stalls, although I did occasionally take refuge from the crowds in the staff room. I eventually wandered back into the sports' hall just in time for the school choir. Consisting of girls from nearly every class (not entirely sure why there were no boys, either it was a girls choir or the lads aren't interested), they sang some lovely Christmas songs beautifully, enough to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The choir ended with John Lennon's Christmas song “so this is Christmas, and what have you done....” you know the one. And with the words “.....and a very merry Christmas and a happy new year, let's hope it's a good one.....” still in my head, I left school at a very late 6pm, into the dark and cold outside, but warmed by mulled wine, hot chocolate, lovely singing, and being a small part of a wonderful school ethos.