Alumni News

Recently the Drama Department has been pleased to have the expert input of a couple of our alumni to support our current Sixth Form students.

Chance Stoner who left Heathfield last year with 3 A* grade A-levels returned to the college to speak to the Year 12 and 13 Drama students about her first term experience of studying Drama at Falmouth University. Chance explained the reasons for choosing to study Drama at Uni rather than Drama college were because she still enjoyed the academic debate about theatres role in society and the same of the more literary based assignments. She was full of enthusiasm for her course and also spoke of links between her A-levels and degree. She was articulate and helpful in her responses to the many questions that the students posed and they gained a real insight into life at university from a Drama student's perspective.

Our alumni are a valuable part of the college community, and we encourage you to get in touch if you are interested in ways you could support the college and our students.

Hayley Huggett, a former Heathfield student who left in 2016, returned to work with the Drama department to see if she would like to pursue a career as a Drama teacher. Since leaving she studied Musical Theatre at Guilford School of Acting. She then set up her own theatre company to work with children with special needs as she believes that theatre should be totally inclusive. It was lovely to have her in the Drama lessons working with our students of all ages and she gave invaluable support to the Sixth Form as she helped Year 12 with their devised piece based on ‘The Crucible’ and she was able to suggest some new play texts for Year 13 who are choosing monologues.

Whenever you left Heathfield and whatever stage of your education or career, please get in touch using the QR code or by emailing alumni@heathfieldcc.co.uk.

Our Peer Mentor programme has flourished over the past twelve months. The premise is that some of our younger students need role models to look up to and having someone who has been where they are now, only a year or two ago, is the most powerful role model one could have. A group of Year 9 and 10 students were trained last year and they have been such positive role models and such a great help to the younger students that the relationships formed carried on into the new academic year without staff asking for the mentoring to continue. The majority of our peer mentors have now earned their bronze level student leadership badge which can only be earned a year’s commitment.

As those relationships blossomed, it became clear that there was a need to train more Year 9 and 10 students to support other younger students. This time we ran training sessions for male and female peer mentors and both sessions showed the compassion and consideration that our students have for others in abundance. It is wonderful that the programme has been extended and can have an even wider reach.

Mr Pollard and Mrs Wayne, who ran the training sessions, commented that our new peer mentors “showed sensitivity and maturity beyond their years. They did themselves very proud and we’re sure that they will go on to give the younger students an excellent quality of support.”

After half term, our new peer mentors will meet their mentees for the first time. There was some sage advice about the experience of being a Peer Mentor from one of the group who trained last year: “It can take some time to feel like you know your mentee but keep giving them your focus and attention and you’ll be helping them massively even if it doesn’t feel like it at first.”