Skip to main content

“Better late than never”: a moto which continually seems to haunt my life. When the lovely Alice asked me to write about my experience as a coach on my first Future Foundations deliveries at Silcoates School, I had every good intention of writing it promptly. However, being tangled up in 3rd year mayhem, teaching and working in sales had other intentions for me! A solid three months later though and here it is, once again “better late than never”!

Arriving at the gorgeous Silcoates School felt amazing and I knew from the moment we saw the building itself that we would be in for a beautiful day. The particular programme which we were delivering was the Year 10 “Step-Up” programme, one which is incredibly dear to my heart and one which I so desperately wanted to get involved with because…

Some 6 years ago I was a year 10 student at Costessey High School when the I was on the receiving end of the exact same programme. The programme genuinely changed my life because after being inspired by a wonderful Future Foundations coach – who gave me faith that there was still time enough to to turn my sinking GCSE results ship around – I went from a FF in Business Studies to an A*A in three weeks (“better late than never”) and by some incredible miracle, with a massive push from the Future Foundations coach and programme which empowered the attitude I needed to change things, not one of my 11 failing GCSE’s failed to get anything below a C grade.
This is why I knew I wanted to deliver on this programme at Silcoates because I have every faith that this programme is brilliant!

From the off they were collectively an incredible group of young people and the FF team were excited to be there and for the day ahead. The responsibility felt huge, I really wanted to motivate and inspire the group and not let them down.The design and structure of the “Step-Up” programme is styled to facilitate the whole year group, no matter where they are in terms of attitude and/or ability. The workshops are engaging, fun and focused with cleverly hidden metaphors which often overwhelm the students. A “WOW” moment for me was during the “Time of Your Life” workshop when they realise how precious time is, how much of it we can’t help but “waste” on sleep, eating, going to the toilet etc and therefore how important it is to make the most of the time we do have. Moments like these on the programme where a murmur of gasps confirm a realisation are priceless and exactly why the programme runs. These incredible moments allowed the FF team to know that we were making breakthroughs! The students at Silcoates were wonderfully engaged and did their school and themselves really proud. Various workshops gave the students the opportunity to observe that their choices in the past do not have to continue to be their choices in the future. The programme geared them up to know that they are in the driving seat of their lives and they are in control of the way they approach their education.

It was an absolute pleasure to finally join the FF team and for once the “better late than never” slogan didn’t seem to apply – I wish i’d done it “sooner rather than later!” Here’s to another great year in 2016 and here’s hoping that we continue to inspire young people to take the “sooner rather than later” approach.

 

To book a Future Foundations Programme, CLICK HERE!