I hope that you all had a wonderful half term! I spent mine in work preparing to open our brand new café over at The Guinness Partnership in Hollinwood and on Friday morning at 7.30am, we opened our doors for the first time!
Firstly I would like to welcome our new chef manager Lotfi to the team. Thank you Lotfi for all of your hard work over the past week! You have done a fantastic job and have worked very hard to get us up and running!
This week really has been a team effort and I want to thank a few people individually for their hard work! We are currently running a pop up café at Guinness, as we wait for the main café to be renovated. That means that we can’t prepare any food on site but we still have 800 staff to feed, so what do we do?! We get a little help from our friends at The Atrium! That’s right, on top of preparing food daily for Springboard, Medtia and First Choice Homes, our incredible team at The Atrium have all extended their hours and are in at 6am every day to prepare grab and go food and jacket potatoes that we then ship down to Guinness each morning! Becki, Sammy and Toni, on behalf of the 500+ people who have eaten your amazing food this week, THANK YOU! You have done the most incredible job!
Also a huge thank you to our team of job coaches who have covered at the café this week! Maria, Anne-Marie, Nicola, Colin and Diane! Again, we couldn’t have got through this week without you all! We’ve all had some very early starts but what an incredible week! AND we also had two students working all week too! Thank you to Zanub and Jason! You worked so hard and the staff at Guinness loved you both! Outstanding work! My personal highlight was making 147 slices of toast this morning on my shift! It is VERY busy!
But of course, life at Medtia continues as our staff and students will explain, starting with our job coach Tisha and our Pre Interns..
A day in the life of Alan at…
Hi there, my name is Alan. I am an ex Activ8 student and I have now joined the Pre Internship course at Medtia. I am completing my first placement at David Lloyd Club where I am really enjoying learning work skills in the DLicious restaurant.
I say good morning to the staff in reception who let me in for me to put my belongings away in the staff room. Learning good manners and communication skills by greeting the staff on arrival is very important. Then I check front of the restaurant and clear any plates left on the tables before I go to the back of house at the restaurant to see if they need my help, as it can be a very busy restaurant! I like helping out with the pot washing and serving customers their meals as it is improving my communication and customer service skills.
Getting ready to take an order out, I double check the food check ticket so I know which table/customer to deliver the food to.
Sometimes I serve beverages to large groups of customers – at first I was shy but now I am confident serving big groups of customers.
Here I am cleaning tables, making sure the restaurant is clean and tidy for new customers.
I am learning lots of different skills, I am lucky the restaurant staff will show me how to do stock rotation at the front of the restaurant or even use the barista machine. Here I am with Georgina the restaurant supervisor – she is showing me how the till works because I was curious and I served the customer waiting!
Bailey, another member of the staff at DLicious is showing me how to make a beverage. I had to concentrate and listen well.
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I will see if I remember the order of how to make a cappuccino the next time I get the opportunity! I am really enjoying my placement and I look forward to it every week. It can get very busy but I am taking it in my stride and I feel I am learning a lot of work skills.
The week before the half term break, Michael and Alan took part in the Fitbit challenge as part of David Lloyd Clubs fitness initiative. The aim is to get as many steps as you can and get into the competitive spirit and find out who the winner is. Michael and Alan loved taking part in the challenge and became really competitive and they also upped their game in keeping up with all the tasks required in the restaurant – I don’t think I’ve ever seen them work so hard and fast!
Michael won by 4000 steps – I think it was Michael’s quick steps versus Alan’s long strides that won in the end. Their reward was a protein meal, they needed an energy boost after all their hard work and being good sports!
I would like to give a huge welcome to Ethan who has just begun the Pre Internship course and has started his first placement at David Lloyd Clubs. Ethan has aspirations to become a Personal Trainer and he will be shadowing personal trainers in the gym when they are available to help him improve his knowledge and learn about the different types of equipment in their gym. He started some training with Pete on his second day… more to come so watch this space!
Now Mrs Joubert has news for us from Digit4ll..
This term has been very productive and the Digit4ll 2 team have been working hard to get our company up and running. Amongst the many skills learnt with iPads they have secured their knowledge in other areas of technology. ‘Key Minds’ has been launched and the group anticipate making money to raise more of an awareness of Mental Health by selling keyrings with our very own uplifting phrases. The enterprise’s finance and managing directors have set up a bank account and have assigned various job roles to all the students. 500 shares will be going on sale within the coming week where employees can purchase 25 shares, and others can purchase 10.
The students have enjoyed accessing the printing department using the press machine where they have completed their first job order of 30 bags for Digital Advantage..
..whilst other students have become more familiar with the badge making machine to perfect future orders for Key Minds..
It is going to be a busy term with the run up to Christmas, Christmas markets and filming of nativities!
Now we go over to Lumenus..
A Day In The Life of Grace
Lumenus Key Stage 5 PathwayIt is the first week back from half term. On Wednesdays we go to Oldham Theatre Workshop as usual. As I am an independent traveller, I walk over to OTW independently.
We are joined by Key Stage 4 Lumenus and we work in mixed KS4 and KS5 groups. Our group have been chosen to work with Chrysalis. Chrysalis is an adult drama group and we join them and participate in lots of exciting drama games and activities. I really enjoy working with my friends in Chrysalis and it’s nice to catch up with them too.
In the afternoon, Ben from the Oldham Coliseum came to support us with the Secondary School Partnership and we did a workshop based on ‘Times Are Changing’ which we are going to be performing in a pop up theatre in Oldham town centre in July. We will be performing an excerpt of this in the Christmas Show which are currently working on.
We played lots of drama games with Ben and I really enjoyed playing the part of a grandma! You will have to come and see our Christmas show to see it all unfold!
That’s all for today, thank you for reading! I hope to see you all at the Christmas Show.
This week I had some incredible news from Mrs Preston! After working very hard on a number of applications, our Lumenus students have forged a new partnership with The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester city centre! They will not only be performing at the theatre next year but they will also be having an industry day at the theatre to find out about the different careers within the theatre and two of our students will be participating in a two week work experience programme! I am honestly blown away by this! Another big thank you to Mrs Preston, Miss Begum and Miss Jackson – you work so incredibly hard to ensure that our students have the best opportunities! Just brilliant.
To finish, you may have seen in Graham’s blog this week that we are continuing to explore opportunities to expand our provision within Oldham town centre. We would very much like to find a building specifically for our pathways students and Future Finders students that will remain in the heart of Oldham, allowing our students to continue to access the town centre and all that it has to offer in the way of community facilities and work placements! More news on that very soon! Don’t forget that Parents’ Evening is a week on Tuesday! We hope to see you all then.
Have a great weekend,
Daniel
Head of Key Stage 5 Pathways
Click here for this week’s news from Graham
You can view our previous blog entries here
News from the Learning Centre and New Bridge School can be found here
