Festivals, Graduations and Proms! Another busy week for our students as we get closer to the end of term!

On Monday Ms Wilson, our Director for Creative Arts took Meghan and Ananya across to Manchester where they spent the day working as volunteers for the Manchester International Festival. They were based within Festival Square, in front of Manchester’s town hall and they had a fantastic day meeting members of the public and offering help, directions and advice!

Well done girls, you did brilliantly and look very smart in your MIF uniforms! They return to the festival next week to work ‘front of house’ at The Science and Industry Museum for groundbreaking multi-media exhibition ‘Atmospheric Memory’. More on that in next week’s blog!

On Tuesday I went over to The Royal Oldham Hospital for the first of two graduations this week! This time for Ellis and Dom who have spent the year on our Bridging the Gap programme. This year’s ceremony was a little more special as we were celebrating the end of our tenth year running our Bridging the Gap scheme! Ellis and Dom both spoke brilliantly about just how far they have come this year and how thankful they are for the opportunities that this programme has given them. Ellis has already gained paid employment at the hospital and Dom is looking forward to putting his new found work skills into practice again next year on our Future Finders programme! Thank you again to Alison Reader and all of the amazing staff at the hospital who support us year after year in providing the very best training and experience for our students. Here’s to the next ten years!

On Tuesday evening we held an open evening for families and students who are joining us next year. It was lovely to meet you all and if for any reason you were unable to attend one of our open morning/evenings, please do get in touch with Mrs Nelson to arrange a visit

I ended my week with another graduation – this time at The Civic Centre for our Future Finders students. We were joined by Councillor Mushtaq and special guests including directors, trustees and representatives from Oldham Local Authority to celebrate the achievements of our amazing Future Finders students. Another fantastic event demonstrating what we do best – ‘Creating Meaningful Futures’.

I am slightly late in writing my blog this week (it is Saturday morning as I type this), but the good news is, that means that I can report to you on last night’s highlight of the student calendar – THE PROM! Along with many of our Year 11 and Year 14 students, I put on my best party frock to join our students in celebrating the end of their time at either New Bridge School or the Learning Centre/Medtia. It was such a fantastic evening, with students arriving in limos, very posh cars and even beach buggies! Our students looked so smart and had the most fantastic evening! What a brilliant way to end their time with us.

For all of those students leaving us next week, I would like to wish you all the very best for the future! For those Year 11s leaving New Bridge and joining us in September, we look forward to welcoming you to our campus!

Now I will hand you over to our job coaches for more details of what our students have been up to, starting with Amanda for our ‘Day in the life’ feature..

A day in the life of Ellis
Bridging the Gap at The Royal Oldham Hospital

My second and third placement has been in cleaning services where I have been working with Paul and Gary..

In the morning, I start work at 8.55am and I meet Paul in the cleaning services laundry. My first job is to sort the mops from the cage into the correct colours and put them into neat piles ready to bag up later.

After I have finished we set off on our collection round where we visit different wards and clinics collecting the dirty mops.

When I enter the wards and clinics, I have to put gloves on so that when I handle the dirty mops and bags I am protected from any germs. When I leave the wards, I put the dirty washing in the yellow truck and then I have to make sure I take off my blue gloves and dispose of them so that I don’t spread germs from ward to ward – this is called cross contamination. Every time I go onto a new ward or clinic, I put a new pair of gloves on. I had to learn about the hospital’s infection prevention code before I could go onto wards and clinics; this is to keep myself and other people safe.

Once we have collected from all the wards we head back down to the laundry to get the dirty mops into the washers.

When we have loaded the washers, we put all the plastic bags together and dispose of them in the recycle bin outside. At around 11.30am I go back to the classroom for my class session. At 12 o’clock, we go for dinner to the Café Royal in the main hospital. I sit with some of my friends from the cleaning service team.

After dinner I go back to the laundry at 12.55 where I get the bags of mops ready for different departments for the evening cleaning shift. First, I put the department tickets into order and then start to bag the mops.

I have to choose the right size bag for the department because some need a large amount of mops while others only need a small amount.

Once I have chosen a ticket, I put the right amount of mops into each bag.

When complete I seal the bag using an elastic band and attach the department ticket.

When we have finished we load the truck and deliver the bags to the office ready for the cleaners to collect at the start of their evening shift.

The bags go into department piles, you can tell the department by the colour of the ticket.

Once we have set out the bags we wait for the morning cleaners to drop off their dirty mops from their shift for us to take back to the laundry to wash. This is where the process starts again. When the mops have been washed we put them in the dryer and when they are dry we start to bag them up for the cleaners again.

Part of my job in cleaning services also includes checking off big deliveries and putting stock away.

Paul has also been teaching me how to damp dust and high and low dust.

In the afternoon I normally work until around 2.30-2.45 then go back to class were I finish off work or chill before I go home at 3pm.
I am enjoying working with Paul, he is very patient and he has taught me many new things, which has helped me to get my evening job. I will miss working with him when I finish in July.

Now we go over to our Pre-Interns..

It has been a busy few weeks for the Pre-Internship students! We have welcomed new students for the next term who have spent 2 transition days with us at Medtia. Here they are during transition day, visiting David Lloyd Club..

..and during a classroom reading session which gave the students and support staff a chance to get to know each and feed back opinions on the story they were reading..

Over the past couple of weeks, our pre-interns have been finishing off their Employability qualifications. They have been working hard to make sure they have completed their units..

Last Monday was our Employability Awards and it was lovely to see our pre-interns accept their certificates and celebrate all their hard work and successes..

In our placements it’s still been business as usual, working hard, but some of our students have been saying thank you and goodbye to the staff they have been working with over the past few months. Becky and Toni were chuffed with their thank you cards from Fahad and Fahad was chuffed because he got to try the stuffed jackets and loved them!

At David Lloyds, Rezaul, Josie and Zanub said goodbye to all the restaurant team. They have done so well and worked hard, improving in so many ways, both professionally and socially. They have learnt the importance of following a good routine, becoming more focused on completing various working tasks, enhancing their motivation and work ethic, improving their communication skills and achieving the confidence to work in a fast paced and busy restaurant environment..

Josie had written a thank you card to all the staff which brought a tear to a few eyes! Kath the chef was really touched by Josie’s kind words, she said no one has ever said such nice things!

This is what the staff had to say..

[fvplayer src=”http://newbridgeschool.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/preinterns.mp4″ width=”1280″ height=”720″]

For our end of year trip we went to Treetop Golf and TOPS Buffet in Manchester and as you can see from the pictures, they all had a lovely time. Alan was our champion golfer, Luka won a free golf session and Kieran and Fahad were our champion eaters. I just want to say a massive thank you to our Job Coach Hayley for arranging the trip. The students loved it. Josie said “it was the best trip ever!”

It’s been an amazing year with our pre-interns and it’s been a privilege to share their experiences and achievements with them and to end our final blog for the term, myself, Hayley, Tish and Mrs Hartley would like to say..

Tom, Josie, Kieran, Alan, Charlie, Luka, Jason, Fahad, Dom, Jay, Dylan, Rezaul and Zanub…..THANK YOU ALL for an amazing year, you have all been fantastic and we couldn’t be more proud. Well done and good luck!!

I would like to finish today’s blog by congratulating some of our amazing staff. Over the past few weeks we have been interviewing for a number of middle and senior leadership positions for our college and I am pleased to say that Mrs Preston has been appointed as curriculum lead for Dance and Drama, Mr Handrick has been appointed as curriculum lead for ICT and Enterprise, Mrs Hartley has been appointed as curriculum lead for English and Mrs Nelson has been promoted to Pastoral Co-ordinator, leading on pastoral care across our site. Congratulations to you all, I am sure you will continue to make a real difference within your new roles.

Next week I am hoping to introduce to you our new Deputy Head of College, just a few interviews to get through first!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Head of Key Stage 5 Pathways

You can view our previous blog entries here

News from the Learning Centre and New Bridge School can be found here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham