I wanted to start this blog with some ‘thank you’s.

Firstly, I wanted to thank all the college families for their continued support. The start of this term has been one of the most challenging ones I have had since I started my career in education. As Graham has mentioned in his previous blog, the school leaders were left in limbo with guidance being released so late in the day.

Can I therefore thank all my families for the support you gave by allowing the college to be able to ensure that the risk assessment was updated and I had the correct staffing levels on site to assure safety for all.

We used our first week back to ensure that all those students working remotely from home had access to their iPads. This leads me to the second group of people I want to thank. The staff team at the college have worked extremely hard. All agreed very early on that they wanted the best for all our learners, so we have kept all learning as the college timetable. Last Friday all families were sent home timetables and all lessons are now being taught through virtual ‘live’ sessions. Thank you to all the staff team for your continued support and ensuring that the wellbeing and learning of all our students is central to what we do.

Finally, I have to thank all our college students – learning from home may seem easy but it is not. We all crave interaction with our peers and staff teams. Being face to face with someone makes learning easier then virtually seeing them on a screen. Being at home is hard, it is so easy to stay in bed all day, play on devices at night and not get up. So well done to you all for getting yourselves into a working routine at home and getting yourselves set up and accessing the live lessons. Keep this up guys.

Our blogs will continue and I am hopeful that each week you will see what fantastic learning is taking place on site and at home, so now it’s over to Anne-Marie..

So, in forgetting to write my blog last week, the first thing I need to say is Happy New Year to you all! And what a start to the year it has been. It has gone from us looking forward to seeing you all back in College and listening to what you had been up to over the festive period, to organising remote learning and virtual group meetings. As ever – and I never doubted it for a second – all Future Finders have risen to the challenge!

We have also celebrated a couple of birthdays over the last 2 weeks – both Jamie and Hasnain have had their birthday celebrations. Hope you had a fabulous day! Shame we could not celebrate in College with birthday cake!

Last week started off with remote learning again and getting used to the systems that we have in place to support this, but this week we have settled in and got on with it! We held virtual meetings every morning, discussed the work for the day ahead and off you went. Future Finders are amazing!

• Employability

All work for Employability can be accessed on Showbie – each learner has their work in a folder, for each unit that we would be completing. So work is always there for you to be getting on with.

Future Finders has always been about trying to gain meaningful futures, which includes looking for paid or voluntary jobs and this can continue even with us not being in College. I have also created a Job Searching folder, so any jobs that I find, I will post them to this folder for you to apply.

I am also going to be creating a well-being folder, with handy tips on how to keep your minds and bodies healthy and active.

This week you we asked you to look at completing your Dragons’ Den presentations from before Christmas – Please continue with those. Remember this is important and will go towards your English Speaking and Listening Presentation.

I know there have been a few technical difficulties with sound etc. but we have been working through these and hopefully solutions have been found. If you are still having problems, please let us know when we do our check-in calls with you and we can do our best to try and help. Just a reminder that if you cannot hear/see people during the sessions, that the work is still accessible on Showbie and we can arrange a phone call to talk it through with you.

I almost forgot – one of the highlights of this week for myself and my team was getting out and doing home visits with you all. We dropped off some work and checked in. It was great to see you and your family. I cannot thank you all enough for your support and understanding, but as we mention every time we speak, if you need anything, please let us know!

• English

This week Miss Asbury has done her intervention sessions and her set Employability class with the Future Finders group. They have been focusing on Climate Change. All students have got work to complete that will help them towards their Climate Change debate, which when listening to you all talk about it during the virtual session, is definitely something that you all feel passionate about. I know you will have no problem debating this issue and no doubt coming up with a few solutions. Remember, all the work is on Showbie.

• Maths

This session has been held virtually again and the group have been looking at averages. You all engaged really well in this session. Again, all your work is on Showbie.

The importance of Times Tables was brought up. There has been time allocated on your timetables, so here I am going to leave this link here:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

And finally, I sat in a Maths lesson this week when they were discussing averages and one of our students was struggling. His Mum came and joined the group and I heard her say, I haven’t done this since I was in school – she sat and listened to lesson, then sat and helped her son. That kind of support is greatly appreciated. Now, when we are in College and out to work, we normally hand out our ‘Worker of the Week’ award, but in appreciation of all our parents, I would like to congratulate you on winning our honorary ‘Worker of the Week’. You have supported both your children and our staff team, all whilst doing your own jobs and lives. Your support and understanding is amazing! But remember if there is anything we can do for you please get in touch.

I would like to say a massive thank you to all Future Finders for just getting on with things – you have been frustrated at times, we all have, but you have shown your resilience and demonstrated over the past couple of weeks how you are more than capable of dealing with whatever life throws at you.

That’s it from Future Finders for this week…….I am hoping it won’t be long until we are back in class, although what will you all do when you have to start getting up really early again? ☺️

Have a great weekend! See you all on Showbie on Monday

from Anne-Marie & Team

Finally, just to update you all that we are still exploring the use of lateral flow testing and we will continue to keep you all informed.

I hope you all have a pleasant weekend,

Jaina and the Team

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can view our previous blog entries here