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involver blog Newsletters

Newsletter 6: New awards, new training and new resources for the New Year

Hello from involver – newsletter number 6.

Happy New Year and welcome to involver’s first newsletter of 2011. It’s that strange time of year when Christmas feels like it was a long time ago, but there’s still ages till it gets warm. To try and take your mind off it, here’s a rundown on what we’ve been up to and also some free stuff for you.

Resource: School Council Progress Board
Asher put together this great way for school councils to keep track of how their projects are going, and the progress that is being made. Very useful, and a lot more engaging than the old and dusty ‘school council noticeboard’ that hasn’t changed in months!
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-progress-boards/

Awards: Speakers School Council Awards 2011 now open
The Speaker’s School Council Awards is rolling into action for a second year. This brilliant project rewards school and college councils that run innovative projects with a big impact. So get your school or college on the shiny new website and apply for the Award. It’s a great project that we’re absolutely chuffed to be working on with Parliament. Get involved at:
www.speakersschoolcouncil.org

Party: involver is 1
Towards the end of last year, involver was 1 year old. We had a little first birthday party to celebrate, and over many, many games of table football, we said thanks to the people we’ve worked with, or who have helped us out. Here’s a few pictures from the night:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=604091&id=312498090415&ref=mf

Awards: Future 100
We recently won our second award; for being one of the Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs in the UK. It’s great to be recognised in this way because setting up a new social enterprise sometimes feels quite thankless! Read more here:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/11/involver-wins-future-100-award/

Competition: £100 voucher
If you joined up to the involver newsletter after seeing our wonderfully bright pink leaflet, then welcome on board! Hope you enjoy the free resources and things we’ll be sending you from now on. Feel free to get in touch or ask a question on our site’s FAQ. The winner of the £100 vouchers was Jade Burnett-MacDonald.

News: Curriculum review and Democratic Life
As we’re sure you know, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, announced the review into the curriculum yesterday. If you’re a teacher, you’re probably groaning about this and asking whether we really need another review with another set of major changes. Whatever your views are, you can find out more here http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum and click on the ‘Call for Evidence’ link to share your views and evidence of what works. As part of the Democratic Life campaign, we’re working hard to keep Citizenship in there!
www.democraticlife.org.uk

Article: Student Voice and CPD
Asher has written an interesting article on student voice and CPD for Iris Connect, a professional development network. Read it here:
http://irisconnecteducatio.ning.com/page/student-voice-by-asher/
Oddly, Asher also got interviewed by Keith Vaz MP for Asian Voice: http://issuu.com/abpl/docs/av_20nov2010 (page 2 no less – we really need to get some more pictures of him though)

Training: School Councils and Students as Lesson Observers
We’ve had a really busy time training in 2011 so far, with great sessions in Huddersfield, Basingstoke and a few in London, we’ve also started work with 3 secondary schools and 1 primary on setting up students as lesson observers. Also very rewarding was watching a Year 6 pupil, who we’d trained the week before, expertly chairing a KS1 school council meeting (hopefully we’ll get permission to post the video soon).

If you want to get some student voice, student leadership or school council training before the end of the finacial year, we still have some dates available but get in touch soon on info@involver.org.uk or 020 3411 3294.
http://involver.org.uk/school-council-training-and-student-voice-support

Music: January’s involver playlist
Here’s this newsletter’s spotify playlist. I must apologise in advance for the Simply Red song that features, it’s just that the title is pretty relevant in the current climate :)
http://open.spotify.com/user/scyne/playlist/4G98SVCHNTGKV3LRnL2FZT

Thanks for listening!

Greg and Asher

http://twitter.com/doingdemocracy
http://facebook.com/involver.org.uk

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involver blog Student Voice Assistant's blog

Being a Student Voice Assistant

This is the first of a series of blog posts that we have asked Alison to write for us, to give us an insight into what it’s like to be employed as a Student Voice Assistant in your gap year and to keep us to up to date with what’s going on at a school that has excellent student voice practice and we love working with. We hope you find her experiences interesting and entertaining.

Asher and Greg

Hello all,

Welcome to my first blog! My name is Alison Seymour. I am 18 years old and last summer I completed my A levels at Little Heath School in Reading. I now work at the school as Student Voice Assistant and strange as it may have seemed at first, the staff room has now become like a second home. I have been asked to write a fortnightly blog for Involver and I am so excited to get started and share with you my experience of student voice.

Over my time as a student some of my roles included chairing the School Council and later our Student Voice Leaders, being on the Sixth Form Committee and also groups that focus on teaching and learning and how the buildings and physical structure of the school can be developed to enhance learning.

In my role as Student Voice Assistant, I now have the opportunity to work together with young people to allow them to experience and learn what I have. It is a privilege to see how they can develop and learn skills that can be used beyond their school career. Pupil voice and youth participation is an amazing way of allowing young people to make a difference. It might be in their school, local community or simply achieving a personal goal. That, in a nut shell, is what I believe to be central to pupil voice.

A really exciting part of my job is to plan our annual Student Voice Conference. This year it takes place on the 2nd February and, since being back from the Christmas holidays, much preparation has begun. We take 150 students out of school and spend the day doing different workshops and also have a question panel in the afternoon. It is an excellent opportunity to spend time with a variety of students discussing topics that are at the heart of school life.

This year the conference has three main strands. Our STARS (Students As ResearcherS) group will continue onto the next stage of their research. 40 students have spent the last year looking at different areas of teaching and learning, such as classroom environment, praise and reward and “what makes a good lesson?”, and how, we as a school, can celebrate success but also, improve these areas. The second strand is looking at Student Leadership and how we can develop a competency framework that allows students to be recognised for the ways that they show leadership. Thirdly, looking at student Rights and Responsibilities and how it feeds into a Language for Learning.

I am really excited to be a part of this day and am so interested to see the thoughts that the students have, because more often than not they are right on the money!

I’ll be back in two weeks! See you then :)

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involver blog

Letter to David Lammy MP: Support Citizenship

David Lammy MP
David Lammy, MP for Tottenham

As you may be aware there is some concern that Citizenship may be dropped from the National Curriculum. David Blunkett has put forward an Early Day Motion (EDM) in support of Citizenship. I’ve written to my MP, David Lammy asking him to sign (support) the EDM:

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

David Lammy MP
Tottenham

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Asher Jacobsberg
61 Clonmell Road
London
N17 6JT

Dear David Lammy,

I am writing to you to ask you to sign David Blunkett’s EDM 1142 on Citizenship Education. As a governor of Welbourne Primary School, a member of the Haringey Schools Forum and someone who works in schools across the UK I am acutely aware of the need to ensure that Citizenship stays a national curriculum subject.

Citizenship is a subject that equips young people with the skills and knowledge to enable them to take control of and play an active in their communities. By showing all young people the important role they play in society it can reach out to young people who find more traditional subjects off-putting.

I hope you will sign this EDM to help ensure that every young person in society can see that politics and active citizenship is for them, not just those who go to Eton or Westminster.

Yours sincerely,

Asher Jacobsberg

If you want to find out more about why Citizenship is so important, have a look at www.democraticlife.org.uk – an organisation we’re on the board of which is campaigning for citizenship education.

Write to your MP here:  www.theyworkforyou.com

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involver blog

involver wins Future 100 Award

Greg’s been named as one of the Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs for 2010 during Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010.
Here’s some info about the award:

Global Entrepreneurship Week is looking to unleash people’s enterprising ideas to address some of the society’s biggest issues – Climate Change – Poverty – Gender Equality – Health.

The Future 100 Awards, profiles young entrepreneurs aged 18-35 who are demonstrating entrepreneurial flair and innovation in progressing a responsible business venture; one which demonstrates a balance between economic, environmental and social goals to achieve ultimate business success.

Founder of Striding Out and organiser of the Future100 awards, Heather Wilkinson said: “The future of our world is in the hands of individuals who are committed to generating commercial and ethical returns. Challenging economic times can offer opportunities to question the way we operate as both a business community and a society. We are profiling the ‘Future 100′ young entrepreneurs who are changing the face of everyday business and improving commerce’s impact on the wider world.”
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involver blog

involver’s 1st birthday party

involver is 1 25/11/10We’ve been up and running just over a year now, so we thought we’d have a party to say thanks to all the people who’ve helped us.

If you have and we’ve forgotten to invite you, please leave a comment or drop us an email and we’ll add you to the guest list.

Location: downstairs at Bar Kick, 127 Shoreditch High Street, Londo, E1 6JE

Map: Bar Kick on Google Places

Time: 6 ’till late

Date: 25/11/10

Speeches: No

Table football: Yes

involver invitation back

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involver blog Resources

From school council noticeboards to progress boards

Can your school council noticeboard actually help drive change?

Pretty much every school I go to has one and they almost all consist of the same things:

  • Photos of the school council (often last year’s)
  • Minutes of the the last meeting (who stops at a noticeboard to read closely-typed minutes?)
  • A poster saying ‘have your say/make a difference/we’re your voice!’

Other than underlining for Ofsted that you have a school council, what does this actually achieve?

How about if you used that space instead for a Progress Board. This would allow everyone in the school to see:

  • What the school council is working on
  • Who they talk to to get involved
  • What the hold ups are (this can put gentle pressure on a slow-moving Headteacher or Caretaker to respond)
  • What’s off-limits and what’s been achieved

Anyway after years of describing this idea to people and sketching it up on flipcharts at training sessions I finally created a graphic last night which shows just what I mean.

School council progress board
If you set up a board like this you need to make sure it is updated at least once a week: make a member of the school council Progress Board Officer. Click the image to see the full-sized version.

Do you have any other ideas for what might go on here (or on a board next to it).

I’d also love to see how something like this could be part of a school council’s page on their VLE or website.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.