Crofton Academy Visit

Today as part of my student ambassador role I was given the opportunity to be part of the 'Flood a School' educational programme. On the itinerary it stated that we would be shadowing art and design teachers for the day, but when we arrived, we were assisting a year nine careers day - which was initially disappointing but it was actually quite a useful day!-

The year nine pupils had a whole day off-timetable to partake in a series of classroom based tasks that would inform them about GCSE options to take, and routes into their desired careers. It was really interesting to hear what the kids wanted to do in the future, what they are interested in and what the steps they plan to take to achieve their potential.

The activities of the day included:

• Introduction to different job sectors
• How advances in technology could help create jobs in the future that they
• Identifying individual strengths and weaknesses 
• Which subjects would relate to specific careers
• Identifying different personality types and different learning styles

What I gained from today:

Today was a perfect example of how essential topics are delivered in a classroom format, which has really helped me gauge the target age range, and methods of teaching required to make pupils aware of essential life skills. The students needed to know everything they were taught today, yet by the end of the day they were getting fed up and irritable. This was partly because they were sat in the same, stuffy classroom all day, and were just handed out sheet after sheet of dull white A4 to fill out. 

I believe today would have been much more successful if:

• The students were in an alternative environment to a classroom, maybe working all together as a year group rather than as separate classes
• There was more interesting visual stimuli/activities rather than just plain paper
• There was more general enthusiasm