Tag Archive freeschool
Shouldn’t success make you happy?
When I first mapped out what I wanted SENDCode to be I always envisaged that, when it proved a success, I would be really happy at being able to have a positive impact with young people and their families, through bespoke person-centred support. I had a hierarchy of people and organisations I wanted to help, with young people and parents at the top.
The thing is that now I have had successes with the programme I feel sad because success for me it means that young people move on to other things and don’t work with me anymore! It affects me in this way because supporting young people and their parents/ carers through the unfathomable EHCP system and listening to the effects it has on the whole family takes a lot of emotional resilience, so when a young person succeeds in feeling mentally tough enough to move on it is like a family member moving to Australia – will I ever be able to see them again?
Let me explain, using an example of someone I’ve worked with this year.
The young person had been excluded from school and had not attended since October 2018. Thankfully, after working with him from March until July this year he is now attending full time at an innovative free school in Greater Manchester. His journey is, in fact, quite common and pretty much in line with James’ experience, from the front page of SENDCode’s website (although James was an amalgamation of many young people I’ve worked with over the years).
His previous school agreed to fund one two hour session per week and we quickly established that he would like to work on producing video content, which he could share via his own YouTube channel. We produced GIFs about his future aspirations, GIFs about his favourite things and GIFs about GIFs! We also decided to produce travel training videos to support young people with social anxiety to be able to use the Metrolink (tram) to get to the centre of Manchester, where most of the Digital businesses we have partnerships with are based.
We also registered him for the Duke of York’s iDEA Award so that he could complete several badges each time we met. It was the iDEA Award that inspired his desire to be able to code. Every week he would ensure he stuck to the routine of completing some badges, before moving on to either complete his video production or work on units from FreeCodeCamp. When he had completed his Bronze Award and had to provide details to receive his letter from Buckingham Palace he kept it a secret from his mum to surprise her which brought a tear her eyes when she eventually found out.
Towards the end of the summer term we planned to produce a video diary of a visit to several digital work-spaces in Manchester; the Co-op’s Federation House where Digital Advantage and Hive Learning ( who even provided him with a laptop as he had no PC at home to code on) are based and we also went to Code Nation to look at their Cyber Security courses. This day really inspired him and not only did he produce a video but also began to develop his own website as a portfolio for his achievements.
Following this we had a mad scramble to get him one of the last places at the new school and I’m overjoyed to say that he has now started to attend full time and he also told me that he has lots of new friends. He will also be part of Digital Advantage’s Pop-Up Digital Agency when it visits the school later this term, which is a huge difference from the lad who was sat at home bored, with his mum unable to work because she had to stay at home too.
Assuming I can get a grip of my emotions I’m looking forward to similar outcomes for the other young people I’m currently working with. Success in this regard will probably mean reducing the watermelon to an orange!