6th May 2022
HEADLINES
By James Saunders
I hope that you all enjoyed the extra long weekend last week. Our four day week has certainly shot by. I am pleased to say that the Bletchley Park trip for C8 on Tuesday went really well. I have spoken to several learners about the day and the things they experienced. I did like the sound of the code breaking workshops.
The quality of candidates was truly exceptional and all involved demonstrated a genuine desire to commit to the process, by offering their thoughts and opinions in a manner far beyond their years.
Due to the unexpectedly high standards seen across the board, all were invited to attend the second workshop, which took place after school The highlight of the week has been the outstanding this Wednesday. Here learners developed and maturity of our learners as they went through the discussed their understanding across some of the recruitment and selection process to become key skills they’ll need to apply within their role as a peer mentors. I am going to hand over this week’s peer mentor. Examples include: effective listening, headlines over to Mr Williams who has done such methods of questioning, how to report potentially a fantastic job at leading this work and inspiring sensitive information safely, goal setting, as well our learners to want to do their bit to support our as the basic logistics behind the running of their community. I was very proud to hear Mr Williams forthcoming mentor meetings, that they’ll be present the project to our Governing Body this conducting weekly with their assigned mentees. week and would like to thank him for supporting our learners. Over to you Mr Williams: Many of the learners will be allocated their current C7 and C8 mentees within the next week, ready to PEER MENTORING SELECTION WORKSHOPS start building the positive relationships required 2022/23 to become an effective peer mentor throughout the final portion of this academic year. Others As the current C11 Peer Mentors transition will be looking forward to being assigned their towards their final few weeks of school before mentees in September, so that they can support exams, the new peer mentor selection process has the new C7s as they enter the secondary school been underway. Following over 60 applications setting for the first time. to become a peer mentor, 50 were shortlisted to attend two workshops that took place after Whilst peer mentoring has been shown to school this week. The first was a predominantly significantly support mentees throughout social scenario based workshop, which ran for two issues, friendships, family problems, dealing with hours after school on Tuesday, and was designed loss or change, difficulty with school work and to identify each learner’s aptitude for the role as bullying; the program is also a vehicle to hone peer mentor. The key skills that candidates were key leadership skills of those within the role as being critiqued on were: maturity, teamwork, peer mentor, thus opening up further doors of engagement, listening skills, empathy, problem opportunity, unlocking unknown potential and solving and communication. delivering a sense of self worth and meaningfulness through the process of supporting others.