Well, we have had an award winning, action packed week this week and I am very excited to tell you all about it in this blog!

On Monday we had our very first Student Council meeting and it was great to hear from our 9 representatives, including Matthew from Future Finders, how well everyone has settled in and that our students enjoy being at Medtia. We were joined by our governors Ken Stapleton and Cathy Bailey. The students have requested new lockers in their rooms and more opportunities to socialise outside of college, which we are looking into and will feed back on in our next meeting. They are also keen for us to have more space and we explained that we are looking into alternative town centre premises over the year to try and allow room for growth! Watch this space!

On Wednesday, I was asked to present at a Careers Leaders conference, where representatives from over 40 schools across Greater Manchester came together to share best practice in careers education and employability. I was very happy to share the work that we do via our employability matrix. At the end of the conference, it was announced that they were going to hand out some annual awards on behalf of The Greater Manchester Combined Authority and I was delighted to be awarded with ‘SEND Provision of the Year 2019’ for The New Bridge Group. Acknowledging that our careers and employability offer is the BEST IN MANCHESTER! I was extremely proud to receive the award and want to take this opportunity to thank each and every person that contributes to our outstanding careers offer, including our employability teachers across the MAT, our team of dedicated job coaches, our work-placement coordinator, our employability curriculum lead and, of course, our careers advisor Chris Thompson. A brilliant team making a real difference! Well done to you all!

Now over to our staff and students for this week’s updates from Medtia…

Luka is loving working in the catering department at the Manchester Metropolitan University and has moved onto food preparation! All the staff love working with him and on Thursday he even worked through his lunch because, as Luka said, ‘It was busy and things needed doing.’ Luka is becoming more confident in his role..

Dominic is really enjoying his placement as a facilities team member at the Manchester Metropolitan University, so much so that he has asked to work longer hours!

This week Reece has been assisting the staff at dsgnuk Web Design with projects; he is growing in confidence, chatting with staff and enjoying his placement.

Lewis is enjoying working as a Teaching Assistant at New Bridge School. He is based in the ICT class supporting Mrs Grogan where he is a great help, always on time and working really well supporting the students. Lewis is enjoying the role and growing in confidence in supporting the students.

Jason’s placement is at the Toll House Café in Dobcross but unfortunately the café has been flooded this week – we hope you get up and running soon! Jason has been working at the Atrium Café all week instead supporting the staff and students there, and has been an excellent help, always working hard and very polite. Well done Jason at coping so well with changing your work placement at such short notice.

Liam has been working with our former student Sam at Oldham library this week. He has been in the basement, unpacking and placing items in the stacking system and reboxing items and then shelving them – we got through 20 boxes! Liam enjoyed it so much, he spent a full day in the basement working with Sam.

Fahad has had another fantastic and busy week at Oldham library, spending Monday in the basement, Tuesday carrying out customer service duties and Wednesday shelving books and assisting customers with photocopying. He now has a timetable for the week which he is really looking forward to following, knowing exactly what he will be doing.

Josh has been working on the information desk at Oldham library, using the computer system to log times of how long public are on the computers. Josh has also worked in the cellar this week, again working really well, showing excellent teamwork and interacting with his peers and staff at the library.

Matthew has had an excellent week at The Clean Plate Kitchen, so much so that we have decided that instead of our usual ‘A day in the life of..’ feature, we need to let him tell you all about his week..

A week in the life of Matthew
The Clean Plate Kitchen, Oldham

I arrive at Clean Plate Kitchen after travelling independently to placement and I just get stuck in!!!!

I am loving it here. I help out in the kitchen, keeping it clean and tidy.

There are also some dirty jobs but we all have to do them!

I have pushed myself this week and started to serve the customers – I wonder what new tasks I could try next week! I have also had some great feedback from my employer posted on Facebook!!

“We would just like to give a shout out to Matty who has been our top waiter this week. In the space of a few weeks he has grown in confidence and not only is he acing the knife and fork wrapping, cofffee grinding, table clearing and pot washing, he has now pushed himself out of his comfort zone and is taking the food orders out. If you come in and meet Matty please give him a big smile and a little patience, we all have to start somewhere and we think Matty is a great lad and he’s off to a flying start. As we were so busy today he took it upon himself to stay an extra half an hour to help us catch up with the pots, what a guy. 👍💜”

I was very proud to hear that and because of all my hard work I have also been awarded Worker of the Week!

On Tuesday we attended a Jobs Fair aimed at hospitality at HACK Oldham hosted by Antz Project! I had a great time looking at the different jobs available in the hospitality industry and learning more about the skills and qualities I will need if I am to go into the industry.

Then on Thursday at college we worked on time management – here I am trying to guess when a minute was up! We had to stand up with our eyes clothed and when we thought a minute was up we had to sit down – Anne-Marie timed us. I got to 1 minute 4 seconds!

Can you do it? Try and see if you can get to sit down at exactly a minute! This helped us to understand time and how long we have to complete tasks and not to waste time!

Now that has been one busy week, time to get home, have a well-earned rest and be work ready for Monday. See you all next week!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Head of College

You can view our previous blog entries here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham