Hello World - It’s me again – Sam the Student Support Officer

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!