We’re starting up a friendly, monthly five-aside game in Old Street for anyone working in the youth and citizenship fields:
bit of fun, bit of sweat, bit of networking
It’s going to be on the second Thursday of every month at 5.50 at Old Street Power Leage. The first one is on the 11th of March. The first 8 people to reply to our email each month get to play so if you want us to email you again next month, let us know even if you don’t want to play this time.
This really is just a fun game, Asher and Greg are both rubbish at football and out of shape, so anyone who fancies it should drop us an email and come. We’ll mix teams up every month.
Please pass this on to everyone else in your office (there’s a flyer attached you could stick up on your noticeboard/in your toilet), or other related orgs who might be up for it.
Thinking about communication, it's not just assemblies and noticeboards.
The Albion High School in Salford (Manchester) had a problem with its school council, as in many schools it was seen as ineffective and so became very unpopular with students. Staff and governors set improving pupil voice as a key priority for the school. With help from Creative Partnerships they have rebranded and reconstituted the school council, which is now known as REGENERATE. It has a significant budget (£30,000) and members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) provide direct support.
Having trained a number of Salford school council co-ordinators the other week I was invited to help run REGENERATE’s training yesterday – I was even billed as “Asher Jacobsberg: National Leader on Student Voice and Involvement” which was a bit of an ego massage! The day was opened by the Chair of Governors and the Headteacher, which I feel was really important for them and the students, really creating a link between the key decision-making bodies in the school. My role for the day, as well as running ice-breakers and rounding the day off, was to help the students decide on a strategy for getting the whole-school involved with REGENERATE. For me this always comes down to communication. The best way to start to pique people’s interest is to tell them about what you’re already doing, and encourage them to tell you what they think. Once that’s working, then they’re much more likely to want to move in to taking an active role.
As well as training, the day was used for making some structural decisions and voting in the Chair.
So this is the session I ran with them, and we came up with a really solid communication plan at the end of it. Very importantly each element had someone who would be responsible for it, and a regular date on which it would happen. Some of the ideas that the students came up with and will be taking forward:
Visit primary schools to tell them about REGENERATE, show they will be listened to at The Albion and find out what they want The Albion to be like when they get there.
Use social networking sites to spread the word about what REGENERATE is up to.
Create a REGENERATE jingle for the radio show that they will be recording.
Make sure that the REGENERATE noticeboards are updated after every meeting, that they are in places where everyone in the school will see them and that they are funny and interesting to look at!
The event was at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, a lovely venue, but I walked through this hothouse and so arrived with steamed up glasses, trying to avoid stumbling into people.
I was at the GTCE‘s ‘Leading a dialogue on pupil participation‘ event today, which I’m sure was called ‘From pupil voice to pupil participation’ when I signed up but never mind, I’m just as happy leading a dialogue as I am moving from one thing to something better.
I must say I was really impressed with the GTCE’s approach to participation and education in general. Their slogan of ‘for children, through teachers’ really chimes in with my view of teaching. The address by Chief Exec, Keith Bartley, really laid out how they see pupil participation as essential to successful and effective learning and teaching. This isn’t just idealistic stuff either, they’re backing it up with research and the event today was partly a launch for their new research anthology ‘Improving pupil learning through enhancing participation‘. It looks like a really good and useful piece of work – I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but it’s my bedtime reading for the rest of the week, it should be yours too. The research looks at variety of drivers and outcomes for participation and I think should be very useful for anyone looking to demonstrate the value to colleagues (or themselves) of this work, as well as giving many practical suggestions for how it can be applied and lots of links to further research.
Some great examples came out of the presentation of this work by Dr David Frost of Cambridge
Dr David Frost (just so you could be sure it wasn’t the other one)
University/Leadership for Learning, one of the authors of the piece. One that particularly stood out for me was a primary school where Y6 pupils had been trained to run circle time and they facilitated this for groups that included pupils from all ages in the school – one can imagine what this might do for a primary school’s sense of community.
A later presentation by Tom Murphy, a new science teacher from a Hertfordshire secondary school, talked about the benefits for his pupils when he asked them to teach full lessons for one another. Not only did they understand the topics better in many cases, it also created a ‘buzz’ for him and students before each lesson, as they never knew how it would be delivered. I intend to follow this work up with him and share more of this here as soon as I can.
We also heard from the deputy head of a special school about how creative they had had to be in using a huge variety of communication methods to ensure that all of their pupils could express themselves and make choices about their school, learning and lives.
Well, it’s late and I realise I’m kind of just reporting the event now, rather than discussing or developing any of the ideas that came out of it further, so I’ll come back to this in the next few days and add another post with some further thoughts.
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.
Italian group presenting their ideas
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:
Out and about in Kosice plus some fun cultural activities, and AMAZING Italian cheese (grana padano) and Slovakian sausage.
The main event was the visit a secondary technical school in Kosice. We had a tour of the school, and the countries who are participating in the project explained their projects – and what was happening with student voice in their countries – to the students.
We met the school council, which is one of the best in the region. Importantly, it had the support of the Headteacher and all staff. Here is a video of the activity and the Slovak group presenting their work:
Rest of the day involved: meeting new people, discussing ideas, walking, drinking, cheese, bowling, and a spot of karaoke (in Slovak). Interesting stuff!
Day 3 is down to business. Discussing the evaluation of the project, and how it shall be reflected in a final publication. Report to follow!
Had a great day 1 at the Slovakia ‘It’s your choice, use your voice’ conference.
Very interesting people from here, as well as Italy. Greece arrives tonight.
Also interesting to discuss the comparisons in progress with student voice.
In the UK, the idea behind student voice is pretty much considered a good one (just not a lot of people do it well), whereas in Slovakia the whole idea of genuine representative democracy is much newer, and far less popular. There really are a whole different set of challenges.
Anyway, due to a long day, some lovely home made wine, I’ve not got much more to offer. Better prep my speech for tomorrow, and sign off.
