Community Enrichment

by Sami Littlefair, Year 13

On Friday 18th November, Year 13 pupils were treated to a well-earned break from normal schooling, through the form of a thoroughly enjoyable enrichment day.

The day started with opportunities to engage with the community and have some fun, ranging from visits to St. Jude’s and St. George’s primary schools, to designing expertly-crafted Christmas cards for loved ones. 

A handful of groups interacted with the wider community, in support of Children in Need, and to make positive impacts on the younger generation. The St. Jude’s group showed great collaboration and commitment through their landscaping and clearing work in the school’s wild area around their pond. The St. George’s and Cumberland infant groups were very hands-on with the children to help them bake delicious looking cupcakes, brownies and cookies and to play some aptly-themed ‘bear pong’! Both groups showed heart-warming compassion and will have acted as inspiring role-models to the younger children. Several Year 13 pupils participated in Maths and English lessons with our own Year 6 Junior School pupils, supporting them in making progress with these subjects. Another group worked on developing a social media campaign for Motiv8 a mental health charity who specifically work with young people, stop motion animations were filmed to support the '5 steps to wellbeing' programme. 

I was lucky enough to participate in the ‘Linkedin Local’ preparation sessions, gearing us up towards a networking-style business event, for invaluable life experience in this area. The two leaders of the event, Lauren and Claire, dropped by to answer some questions, say a bit about themselves and unload some tips and tricks to building an enticing Linkedin profile. They also helped us with the basics of networking, offering their support on the day if we needed it. A handful of pupils showed great courage in these sessions, sharing their business pitches to the group after Mr Rees lent some helpful guidance on the quality of pitch delivery. It was great of the two event-leaders to come and share some insightful thoughts surrounding networking, and maybe even Mr Rees learned something new! 

A group of students had the pleasure of designing Christmas cards, fuelled by the diverse supplies of the Geography department. One student said ‘it was nice to take a break from normal school’, and that they enjoyed the ‘creativity’ it evoked from them. This was another activity which allowed compassion to surface from the students, through an act of giving.

The day concluded with two afternoon subject revision sessions, offering extra support and guidance to the students, in a more relaxed manner than usual. In some subjects, a different perspective was offered compared to standard teaching; in the Psychology session, useful revision methods were covered, and in the Biology session, rats were dissected! The photos from this session could make an onlooker slightly queasy, but the students appreciated the variance in teaching methods from the department.

To summarise, the day was superbly engaging, and I’m sure that the themes of collaboration and compassion that flowed through it helped everyone to have a great time.