Hello World!!!!
It’s me again – Sam the Student
Support Officer!! It’s been a few weeks since my last update so I thought I’d
spend the afternoon writing about the weird and wonderful activities that have
been happening as of late!
Where shall I start? Well
the last few weeks have been very interesting and diverse here at TTPL. We had
a VETPRO German group consisting of four lovely German teachers/social workers
here to learn about social inclusion and how we in the UK integrate special
educational needs learning into our mainstream education systems. The 2 week’s
‘inclusion programme’ consisted of a variety of school visits, industry
workshops and seminars and real hand’s on work experience. I had the pleasure of taking the teachers to
Embercombe farm, South Devon College and my old employers in the SEN department
at KEVICC in Totnes.
“Embercombe is a
charity and social enterprise established to champion a way of living” whilst
inspiring people to contribute energetically towards an
environmentally sustainable and spiritually fulfilling human presence on earth”
- http://www.embercombe.co.uk/ . I
know that sounds like a mouthful, but trust me they are doing some fantastic
work there, with a committed ethos to people, community and our world! South
Devon College took the time out to give our ladies a friendly and welcoming
tour of all their facilities and explained in depth how they integrate learners
and abilities. Whilst KEVICC threw the teachers in the deep end, putting them
in class room environments to shadow SEN teaching assistants (a role I used to
do there). For me the experience was amazing, as I got the chance to meet
students who I had worked with when they were in Year 8 and 9……they were now 15
and 16 studying for their GCSE’s and getting ready to enter the BIG BAD WORLD!!
Tell me more…I hear
you say! Well, we have also had some brilliant social activities the past two
weeks. As you may know, we meet the students every Thursday afternoon to see
how they are, what they have been doing and of course to have a bit of fun! It
can’t all be work can it? We had a good ole British Pub Quiz last week in local
pub DT’s, written by a student - for the students, it is a great way to get the
students speaking and listening and communicating with each other in English!
We also went to Cockington Court for a traditional Devon cream tea! That’s
cream first, then jam; for those of you who are uneducated in cream tea law! It
was a lovely afternoon, truly British…one might say - Heaven in Devon! And this
week we are off to Jungle Journey for a bit of crazy golf! Like I said it can’t
all be work can it!!! Oh I nearly forgot
I did baton twirling for Sport Relief – this was not fun, it is a serious sport
that I took very seriously and was fully committed to (cough cough) 
More?
Go on then. We have also had
group of French students arrive looking to gain sales and retail experience, a
group of 17 young Italians hoping to improve their English and we are ready to
welcome a group of 34 nurses arriving this weekend! We currently have 65
students working in and around Torbay at the moment, so there is a very good
chance you’ll encounter one of our lovely students working hard when you are
next in town. But it’s not all just people coming to the UK we currently have 6
UK graduates undertaking work experience in Europe too. Lorenzo (our
marketing/admin guru) got the chance to go to Toulouse, France last week to
visit a couple of them, LUCKY g*t, and Nadine our Business Development Director
is off to Leipzig Germany this week then Barcelona. This is proof we here at The Training
partnership are very much International!!!
Ps I have heard/imagined
that we are sending students to the Caribbean soon and obviously it’s my turn
to go. Thank you TTPL – I can’t wait! hahah
THANK YOU!
