As regular readers of our blog are aware, the Learning Centre and New Bridge vision is Creating Meaningful Futures and we constantly strive to provide extra-curricular opportunities based around preparing for life after the Learning Centre.

With this in mind, on Thursday and Friday we welcomed Kate de la Motte from Future First who delivered a series of workshops for all our students on the theme of ‘Preparing for Adulthood’. As part of the programme, we were delighted to welcome back former Learning Centre students Seb and Ellis who played an integral part in all the sessions.

The workshops involved warm up activities followed by question and answer sessions with Ellis and Seb about their own journeys and the world after New Bridge. The workshops aimed to:

• provide students with an increased awareness of the opportunities available to them
• help build students’ confidence, raise their aspirations and develop a range of skills to help them transition successfully from the Learning Centre, preparing them for adult life

Through sharing their own stories, Ellis and Seb helped the students find out more about the pathways open to them once they leave. The workshops also provided an opportunity to develop communication, decision making and problem-solving skills through role playing everyday scenarios.

There was a slightly different approach to the Interactive Base and E-Base workshops. These revolved around role play (with a lot of dressing up) and I had the pleasure of joining students on a virtual public transport bus going to Horizons where things go horribly wrong (not entirely surprising given that it was driven by a mixture of policemen, surgeons, builders and what I think was Michael’s finest ‘Chimney Sweep’!)..

A mention has to go to Mrs Taylor who treated Ellie to a very animated journey!

Ellis and Seb thoroughly enjoyed coming back and inspiring all our students..

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We reflected upon what the students had learned about ‘Preparing for Adulthood’ during Friday’s assembly where staff and students had the opportunity to ask Ellis and Seb some more questions which they answered with confidence and clarity.

We have to say a big thank you to Mr Barker and Miss Lane for helping to organise such a successful couple of days. Hopefully our students are now becoming more confident about their futures and, as Ellis stated,

“If I can do it, so can you. Stay positive, work hard and be confident!”

Great advice Ellis! I’d like to finish with a quote written by a student on their evaluation form in response to the question “What did you learn today?”

“That I can do good in the future and go far in Life” ~ Aimee (Year 12)

Seb and Ellis also made an appearance on Twitter..

It was lovely to welcome so many families to our Parents’ Evening on Tuesday, thank you for coming. If you have not yet had chance to fill in our very short questionnaire about your visit, please could you take a few minutes to complete it here.

Mr Smith has been busy organising the next New Bridge Group Parkrun Takeover Day which is now set for Sunday 15th December. Please come along if you can – more details are available here.

Finally, don’t forget that our next Parent Group meeting is on Monday at 2pm when we will be welcoming back Mrs Velti, a solicitor from Touch Solicitors, who will be talking to the group about various legal matters relevant to our young people. Her previous visits have been a great success and parents have found the information and advice invaluable. We hope you can join us – our students will be providing refreshments as usual, just look at what they treated me to this week..

Have a lovely weekend,

Dawn

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can find Gavin’s blog for the school site here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

You can find my previous blog posts here