Bishop David Brown School case studies
Haydn and his Words for Work team
Haydn, 14, talks about his experiences of Words for Work:
“At the beginning I was really worried – I’m not going to get on with them, they’re going to be all boring and this but now you get to talk to them and they’re just like normal people really, not all scary. I wasn’t sure what to expect cos I didn’t know anything about it – I have a couple of friends who did it last year in the year above. I never really got the chance to speak to them [about it] and whenever I got the chance I just sort of drifted off…I didn’t really know what to expect.
Because the business volunteers have experienced interviews, the techniques we need – they’re kinda telling us what we need to do. Now we realise that it’s not just going to be easy when we get out of school. It’s definitely helped me to do more interview techniques – that’s the main focus for me – that’s what I think we need when we leave, more than anything. It’s made me more confident, it makes me know what I need to do. If I’m speaking to someone, ‘ugggh’ moaning and that – it’s made me consider how they’re feeling when you’re speaking to them.
I’ve enjoyed the acting…I like acting, but more because it’s humorous and you get to have a laugh with everyone. The acting’s been good but I think with the volunteers coming in and that, cos we’re getting a lot out of it – it’s not like it’s like ‘Great! We’re missing lessons, let’s come in and muck about’ and that – we’re getting a lot out of it and I’m glad for that. In our lessons, it’s just normally writing and reading and stuff but we haven’t really done communication before – it’s something new and it’s took on board very well and that. Because you still got to do some writing and it helps us learn a lot more as well.
I like the people I’m with, I didn’t really speak to many of them to begin with but now we’ve become friends – I’ve made new friends and it’s nice. I knew Sam and Roisin, but didn’t know some of the others but now I speak to them a lot. You can get on with anyone – you don’t have to be with your friends all the time. Even if you don’t like someone to begin with, I try to be friends and try to be nice – if you treat them well then they treat you well back.
Respect for others is probably the main thing I’ve learnt, respect for yourself really – dressing smartly, making an effort – when you got eye contact with someone, it helps because they know you’re listening, they’ll treat you with the respect you give them – that’s all that matters. Listening and that all comes under respect for me. I would say I’m a confident person anyway, but obviously, I’ve learnt new skills what can help me and now I can go and talk to anyone really and go ‘oh yeah!’ and not really worry what the response is. I know what I’ve got to do.
Before Words for Work, I didn’t really think communication was a skill – I just thought being polite to someone is obviously good. Then, when they said about ‘you gotta do all this and this’ in an interview, I was like ‘wow! Really!’ it’s like – it’s a lot to take on board. When you learn about it you realise, oh, wait, you do!
Definitely, yeah, I think [Words for Work] should be taught in schools. We all need this in life. Like Mark said, one of the volunteers, he went ‘this is something I didn’t learn in my school’ but I wish I had this and it’s helped me a lot now I’ve learnt it later in life. Speaking and listening is definitely important, because I love talking and ask my teachers and they’ll say…you gotta listen to someone to be respected and if you don’t listen and you don’t talk you’re not going to learn as much. Obviously you’re gonna be great if you’re learning, if you’re just quiet you won’t have the confidence to go into an interview or in life really.”
Kate and Louise, volunteers at Bishop David Brown School
Kate – Account Services Manager at McLaren Automotive – specialist in relationship management (people) volunteered at BIshop David Brown:
"I decided at the beginning of this year I wanted to do some volunteer work and I wanted to do some volunteer work with children. Reason being – I’m looking after my own personal work/life balance because I wasn’t very good at it last year – I worked far too much. When this opportunity came up through McLaren I thought it sounded absolutely ideal. It was a really nice way of using the skills I use every day at work to train my own staff to employ in a school environment to help children develop themselves. When I thought about it, we didn’t have anything like this at school and I wish we had. Selfishly, for my own benefit to give myself some other purpose, and also because it was using some of those skills I already had, and I wanted to share those. Something I’m using more in work as well, is the coaching. Rather than telling them what to do, it’s encouraging them to come up with their own ideas. It’s gradually working. There have been things I have been learning at work, and helped coached and developed my team. I’ve seen things work in the office and used them on the project and vice versa.
In today’s session I felt that there are a couple of instances where the children reflected back on something we’ve spoken about before and came out with the benefit and the improvement and the right answer. For example, I said to them, when we were presenting before, what did we say was an issue with having paper? And they were talking about the lack of eye contact, the movement, the fidgeting…everything we’d spoken about before they’d remembered. That felt really good. Really good. Although they’re not actually showing it just yet, they’ve come up with those improvements and ideas we’ve spoken about. That was really rewarding.
I think pupils are benefitting from the project because It’s not school as such. They don’t have to. It’s one of those things where I think they’ve chosen to do it, they’re working with us, I think there’s a whole different…if I look at the way I behaved when I was at school you know, you’re slightly in awe of the people that are there, you behave differently because you’re on show all of a sudden and then to take it seriously because you’re just being human, you’re just being yourself. You’re trying to impress somebody who you want to have praise from. It’s good because it’s normal, isn’t it? B didn’t even want to speak when we first started, and now she’s smiling and I’m giving her praise where praise is due. It’s nice because I feel like they think these are our volunteers.
I think they spend such a lot of time in their school life in their own peer groups, when they’re outside lessons and then in organised groups when they’re in lessons, they are, from my own experience of school – it is a fairly dictatorial environment to be in. When you’re responsible for your own personal ‘brand’ and the way you react, a lot of kids don’t know who they actually are and how they should behave when they’re out of the environments that they’re used to being in all the time. I think this gives them an insight. You don’t look like you’re a goody two-shoes by learning how to prepare, because those things lead to success. It’s not tough to be the school lout or the school joker all the time, but you can tell those things to make a success of yourself.
I’m really glad I’ve done it. I’ve met new people, and people at work I’ve never met before. I feel really proud every time I say ‘I’m off to school tomorrow’ – it gives me another dynamic about me. It gives me something else that I do. I benefit from it, definitely."
Louise – Senior Policy Officer, Planning Department, Woking Borough Council volunteered at Bishop David Brown:
"I wanted to do some volunteer work. Many volunteering opportunities required so many hours, and I’m also not very good at my work-life balance, I didn’t want to have to commit myself to every single Saturday. I wanted to do something with children as well. I always toyed with the idea of being a teacher but decided to do a geography degree instead because of my own confidence. It’s like a personal challenge for me. And I love it!
I think managing that group of people, 4 of them are very dynamic and one of them is very quiet and trying to manage the four more vocal members of the team and trying to bring out the quieter one and trying to balance that is quite a challenge. They have amazing ideas that they want to share and sometimes talk over each other etc so trying to manage that is something I’m doing at work at the moment too as well.
The poster that we did a couple of sessions ago on presentation skills and that sort of thing has gone up on the wall and they are very pleased with themselves that it’s gone up and they’re saying that theirs is definitely best. They put so much work into it and they’re just really pleased with themselves today. It’s really nice to know that the little bit of help and encouragement I gave them in the mentalness that was that one hour session has ended up being rewarded by it going up on the wall and it looks really good. That’s quite cool. It affected their confidence today. They’ve got the tools to put into the toolbox, they’ve just got to learn to apply the flags that we did at the beginning of the session today, they really need to be thinking about them.
It’s about giving pupils the tools to help them make that successful transition from being a child and an adult and being in the real world. Exactly as you say, some of these kids just don’t know how to speak to ‘grown-ups’ and how to behave. I did the elections last week, and some of the teenagers came in with their parents – it was absolutely shocking, the way they were speaking to people. This 18 year old came in to vote for the first time, dragged in by their mother, stood in front of me and said ‘I don’t know what to do’ [aggressively]. It’s teaching them life skills."
