It’s been another exciting week down at Dean Street. We are continuing to develop the Key Stage 4 common room and this week I’ve been forced to visit Ikea (not my favourite place!) to begin to kit out our kitchen area.

Key Stage 4 have settled really well into the demands of the new term. Each group has sat with their form tutors to think about what they would like to do in the future and have begun to plan how they are going to get there. We have also asked the students to come up with a design for their ‘well done’ cards – more about that in my next blog.

The staff were also fortunate to attend a session hosted by Luke Ambler on Tuesday. Luke started the Andy’s Man Club after the sudden and tragic death of his brother in law and he spoke really movingly about his #ITSOKAYTOTALK campaign. This is something that both Miss Rodgers and myself are keen to bring to Dean Street following the success of the New Bridge Andy’s Man Club group for students at Medtia Square. Mental health is something the New Bridge Group has been passionate about for some time and we always promote the importance of talking and sharing issues or problems.

Year 10 continue to carry on exploring the great outdoors and last week visited the Sandstone Trail at Bickerton in Cheshire. They climbed ‘Raw Head’ and then explored to find the caves underneath called the Queen’s Parlour and the Bloody Bones Cave!

This week they combined Duke of Edinburgh’s with the photography students in Key Stage 4 and all went out to find a waterfall for the photography students to photograph. They started at Woodhead Pass and walked down the 3 Black Clough’s path to the Middle Black Clough which then involved a scramble up the clough to find a beautiful waterfall..

The cloughs had swelled with the rain overnight and involved all of the pupils supporting each other to cross the fast flowing cloughs without getting (too) wet..

We saw some great teamwork and communication from our group in doing this and we were all rewarded with a fantastic lunch spot at the foot of the fall..

Of course, some of them couldn’t resist..

Finally we finished the week off with our Macmillan Coffee morning. It was so good to see all our young people, Key Stage 3 and 4 together, plus our families and carers enjoying a coffee and a cake for a cause which is very close to all our hearts. A big thank you goes out to all those who contributed and a big ‘thanks’ needs to go to the staff for setting up the room and supplying the yummy cakes..

..which didn’t last long!

Dean Street is also welcoming a special guest – Mr Quinn, our CEO will be joining myself and Miss Rodgers for the next few weeks to support us in running the site. I am sure all our students and staff will welcome him and make him feel at home.

So here we are, moving into October already!!! One month down and lots of things to look forward to and plan for.

Have a good week everyone,

Mrs Tootill
Head of Springboard Project

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