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Ringwood in the News Autumn 2008 14
F r e s h e r s F a i r
On Monday 15th September
Ringwood School held its
very first ‘Freshers Fair’.
This was an event showcasing all
the extra-curricular activities and
opportunities available to young
people across all year groups at
Ringwood School.
Whether you were interested in the
skills of debating, wanted to turn your
hand to film making or radio, have a
particular penchant for music or PE or
just want to know what the Amnesty
International group get up to then this
was the event not to be missed. There
were lots of students and staff on hand
to help and encourage everyone to
get involved. Ringwood School’s first
Freshers Fair was a huge success with
lots of students coming along to see and
sign up to the diverse opportunities on
Year 12 Health and Social
Care students recently
faced some of the problems
experienced by people with
disabilities in Ringwood. Here are
three students describing what
they experienced.
In our Health and Social Care lesson
we were split into two groups and
given a wheelchair, some blindfolds and
some goggles which had black tape
over them. We did this because we
were trying to find out what it felt like
to be in a wheelchair, to be blind or to
have tunnel vision. What we found out
from our experiment was that when in
a wheelchair people gave you a lot of
weird looks. Also they felt as though
they needed to shout at us, when it was
our legs that were unable to work, not
our hearing. When I was in a wheelchair,
Written by, Mrs Laurilla
offer to them. It’s still not too late to
join any of the activities and clubs, so
one of the best ways to get involved is to
get yourself along to an extra-curricular
activity and have a go.
Health & Social care Students
experience difficulties
I was asked by our teacher to buy
some cat food from a supermarket.
When doing this the woman at the till
was rather discriminatory, as I handed
her the money but she handed the
change back to the woman pushing my
wheelchair not me.
(Ashleigh Read)
While I was pushing Lily in the
wheelchair we had to go and buy a
newspaper from the newsagents. It
was difficult to get the wheelchair in
because the shop was so small and with
the other people around trying to get
their newspapers as well, I felt like we
were just in the way. It was then difficult
to get the wheelchair back out of the
shop because we couldn’t turn it around
because of lack of space and we couldn’t
go forward because there was a pole in
the way which the wheelchair couldn’t
fit past. I did find that getting from the
zebra crossing on the road onto the
pavement was difficult even though the
path had been lowered. Also with the
blindfold on it was very difficult not to
knock things off the shelves because
they were so close together.
(Nichola Mitchell)
When we were trying to cross the road
with the wheelchair we found it hard to
get up the kerb as the wheelchair got
stuck. The person wearing the blindfold
felt quite worried that they were going
to walk in to something, they also had
to trust the person guiding them a lot.
I think it could be hard to be alone in
Ringwood Town if you have a disability as
we found it very hard.
(Abigail Duffell)