Here’s Livio telling us about his role, and why he feels it is important:
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Twitter Updates for 2009-10-07
- RT @dughall: Zenna Atkins – Chair of OFSTED: 'Kids are teaching each other and kids are teaching their teachers' #hhl09 #studentvoice #
- Aimed at business/adults but good advice for anyone doing some public speaking: http://bit.ly/2xQkcd #studentvoice #
- Good idea: #studentvoice RT @Jason_Cobb: It's school council election day. We've got the election officials from Southwark Council coming in #
- @dominiccampbell Try http://www.philanthropycapital.org/ and http://www.trustfunding.org.uk in reply to dominiccampbell #
- RT @GoldenGus: great session on leadership for our aspiring beekeepers from @Asherjac http://bit.ly/LHB3u -ability/decisiveness/charisma tx! #
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Slovakian adventure!
I’m back in London, via Vienna, after an amazing time in Kosice, Slovakia. It was a very inspiring and interesting three days.
Great to hear about the challenges, successes and stories of people in other countries who are broadly trying to do the same things as us in the UK. Great to meet so many motivated, passionate young people. Great to visit Slovakia for the first time – it is a beautiful country!
After the first day of the meeting, with a visit to the school (See pic) , the rest of the trip focused on evaluating the ‘It’s your choice, use your voice’ project.
It was down to business in the amazing venue in Kyask – a beautiful old Soviet recreation centre for young people, set in the hills outside Kosice. A perfect place to work and think! The project had linked and compared school councils and youth democracy across Slovakia and Italy. It included training, conferences, seminars, youth exchanges, and supporting school councils to link with each other, and with regional councils.
A number of common obstacles were identified:
- problems with elections
- lack of youth motivation
- lack of joined up thinking from local government
- adults who are too willing to lead instead of facilitate
It was useful to provide my point of view on these obstacles as we went along, making clear how familiar they are to us, and discussing how best to overcome them.
Their main idea is to present the evaluation of the project in a way that will convince other young people to get involved. To pass on their learning to others, to help motivate young people – to make them ‘involvers’ I guess. Together, everyone put together a clear plan on the publication to convince other young people, which I’m sure will be a success – using some very eye-catching design. It will be translated into English, Slovakian and Italian, so I hope we can put it up on the involver site when it is done.
There were also lots of ideas for further cooperation that we hope to get involved with. I gave information on what Asher and I are up to with involver, and signposted resources and ideas which could help everyone in the future.
I think I’ll be going back in November – hopefully with Asher this time – to do some training, which is very exciting. The Kosice region is setting up their first regional school council.
Democratic youth voice on this scale has never happened before, so it’s amazing to be involved. There is also a possibility of some training in Turin to help with their regional school council in February next year – we would love to be involved in this too.
Both opportunities are very exciting – especially because it would give
me the chance to catch up with my new friends. Sooooo cheesy (sorry).
So thank you Michal and Erika for inviting me to take part, and thank you to all the young people who took part (especially for the Slovakian ‘mineral water’/ and the (many) Italian songs from Napoli). A great experience.
Over the course of the three days, I took short videos of some of the young people present asking them why student voice and school councils are important to them. I’ll put up a new one every day for the next week or so. Thank you to those who took part in this – your English is great! Here is Veronica from Slovakia telling us about her role in her school in Kosice:
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Twitter Updates for 2009-10-06
- @kathleensorrell The working group needs to be credible, so a mix of students and staff in terms of ability, popularity and scepticism. in reply to kathleensorrell #
- Just got a call about becoming a governor or a Haringey primary school. Very excited. #
- Just been contacted about the governor position through Facebook, wasn't expecting that, but happy they did get in contact. #
- @msstewart Very annoying. You could also take a photo next time, then if it does get wiped at least you can project it. in reply to msstewart #
- RT @andrewflowerdew: #hhl09 Roberts suggests that schools need to listen and ACT on the voice of the student – too many just listen #
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Twitter Updates for 2009-10-05
- @kathleensorrell Start with boundaries and responsibilities (get a group of staff and students to work them out) then have an election. in reply to kathleensorrell #
- @kathleensorrell Otherwise people won't know why to vote for someone other than their friend. in reply to kathleensorrell #
- Nice set of teaching #studentvoice web tools from @take_the_plunge (via @norfolkTeachers) http://bit.ly/3dpb1t #
- MOTD2 (with 6 Arsenal goals) then Buzzcocks and now a Python documentary – BBC2 is conspiring against me doing any work. #
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I ran a training session for the Golden Company on Saturday. They’re an amazing little social enterprise getting inner-city kids into keeping bees. I guess they’re really trying to address two problems: lack of constructive things for young people to do and the decline of the bee population in England (and World-wide). Anyway, they were great to work with and I thought I’d share the session I ran with them, with you.
They’d asked me to come in to help them create a code of conduct. We had agreed that this would entail looking at leadership as well. How we relate to other people is my favourite thing to train on, I guess because it’s the area in which I’d most like to make a difference. Ultimately what all of this is about is getting people to treat one another well. If that happens then all the other good stuff will just flow.
So for me the most important ideas to get across were:
- Leadership is about a group, not an individual. One leads only because the others follow.
- So, everyone in the group has to think about how they’re acting as they might become the leader at any moment,and not necessarily by choice.
- Those who lead by example will lead better and for longer.
Part of the session was based on pictures I’d pulled from that day’s newspapers and magazines. So reasonably at random I’d got the Pope, Hitler, the Chinese Army, Obama, Michael Jordan, Cesc Fabregas, David Cameron, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Dreda Say Mitchell, Ferris Lindsay, Craig Bellamy, Spike Lee, Muhammad Ali, Dame Mary Perkins and Nicole Richie. There were several others too, that I can’t recall right now.
Much of our discussion though focussed on Craig Bellamy. He’s currently the Captain of Wales (at football) as well as playing up front for the Manchester City, the richest football club in the world. He’s arguably the best footballer Wales have (as Ryan Giggs has retired from international football). He’s also set up a charitable foundation in Sierra Leone with a considerable amount of his own money. He has what is often described as a ‘chequered past’ though, having hit an opposition fan, clashed with a Wales fan, allegedly attacked a team mate with a golf club and had several run ins with the police. How does he fit as a leader, which of these things are relevant? My opinion is that they all are.
If you use this session, I’d love to hear which people you have the most interesting discussions around and what code of conduct you come up with in the end.
Use the ‘More’ button to Download (‘Save’) or Print the session out.