Celebrating Donna & Lisa for their long service
Celebrating Donna & Lisa for their long service!
Lisa Eales – 20 years service award. Started 3rd November 2003
Our lovely Lisa is a wonderfully kind lady who has offered not only the nursery children some of the very best years, but also the staff team. She is a ‘mum’ to us all and will often be seen giving words of encouragement and suggestion to the staff in their hour of need. For reasons we can’t remember, she always enters the room in the mornings with a ‘G’day mate’ in her best Australian accent despite not ever visiting the country!
She is a dedicated grandmother to Harry and loves spending time with her family and her dog Jessie. Unfortunately, both Lisa and her husband Andy suffer an affliction of being Tottenham hotspurs fans but we don’t hold that against them. Even during her time at home, she thinks about the nursery children and still maintains the passion for her role by collecting up things from home and bringing them in for the children to enjoy and usually stick and glue to something – We say ‘here comes the bag lady again’ as she never has enough arms to carry all that she brings along. We are so thankful to have Lisa at our nursery to brighten up our days.
Donna Forsyth 40 years service award. Started 15th September 1983
When we asked the staff what we could say about Donna, they all just take a big sigh and say there are not enough words and they wouldn’t know where to begin, so this is going to be tough as we give it a try.
This magnificent woman is the backbone of the nursery. Her biggest most noticeable trait is her energy and enthusiasm. Donna is the first to arrive every morning and you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t her first day at work (rather than over her 8,000 day!). Donna will try to help anyone and everyone and will lend a hand, a listening ear or a voice of reason to those in need. There is no job too big or too small that she won’t tackle.
Another of her attributes is that she has nailed the artform of giving the worst news in the best possible way without upsetting or offending a soul – factual, polite and with a smile. Donna has a cheeky, engaging laugh that just makes you want to join in. She often has little in-house jokes or stories with the children that only they will understand.
She knows all the children by first name and can remember them even when some have returned to the nursery as adults with their own children! Donna’s retirement day will be the saddest day the nursery has had to face but we have some happy memories to share.
When we asked Donna what the nursery was like when she started she recalls the following:
Initially the nursery had a 50 place term time only nursery exclusively for staff and students. The old nursery site building was situated next to Sports Centre. The building was old and tatty with lots of rabbits living underneath! The pipes used to regularly freeze, we used to wash the Terry nappies in a big boiler container that regularly used to boil over. We had no on-site cooking facilities so lunch for the children meant driving in our car to pick up the lunches from the Hex restaurant, invariably it had slopped over in the backseat of the cars by the time we got back!
We used to borrow a mini bus from the Sports Centre to take the older children out to local parks, Brightlingsea and Mersea; The Queen came to see the university and we all waved and cheered.
I was acting Manager whilst Elaine was on maternity leave; The nursery building was very dilapidated and the University invested in a new purpose built Nursery and we doubled in capacity although it was two separate buildings to begin with and our offer extended to families so we no longer offered term time only.
I had my own two children (Louisa and Henry) now and they embraced Nursery life with a real zest for learning and having fun! Plus I always hated Arty activities so sending them to Nursery worked perfectly for us all. The Nursery was still expanding and the two buildings were linked with the conservatory and another room was created.
The Queen came to visit again!
The Nursery has continued to evolve and it’s been interesting to see the way different learning trends have come and gone.
I’ve always been a huge advocate of outdoor learning and experiences and I love the opportunities that the Forest school brings to the Nursery.
