Student Life | Issue 40

people. The teachers were also very
understanding and polite. You could
tell they were because of the way they
spoke and the expressions on their
faces. I felt like I could approach them
and speak to them without them
getting cross with me.
WHAT HAVE I LEARNT?
All the things I learnt were connected
with work-based topics so; how to
answer a customer caller and how to
work as a team, which we learnt by
doing problem solving tasks that were
given to us by the teacher. We also
learnt how to deal with customers
face to face if you encountered nasty
and badly mannered customers.
When I was in the cooking group, I
also worked with others and cooked
meals for the students and teachers.
As well, I ran the tuck shop and
the till and had to take payments
for people’s lunches. We would go
around and ask people what they
wanted for lunch whilst giving them
a choice of what to eat and then took
orders of what they chose from the
options given. In addition to all of
that, we all took turns in washing and
drying up, checking dates on food
labels, cleaning out the fridge when
needed and generally cleaning and
tidying the kitchen.
Team Building skills were also
included in Mark Wyatt’s group. The
team building skills task was to work
as a team to say all of the numbers
in order and do this in the quickest
time we could. The way it worked was
that we would lay all the numbers
out on the floor and then with all of
the students we would make a circle
around these numbers. Depending
on where you were around the circle,
you would choose the numbers that
you knew you could reach quickly.
Unfortunately, some people had
numbers that were further away
from them. We were all sitting on
chairs and obviously we only had one
pair of hands which meant that we
needed to use our feet and any other
body parts we could possibly use.
Sometimes we would beat the time,
meaning we would beat the quickest
time achieveable for doing the task so
then we would carry on getting better
and better. If we didn’t beat the time
we would carry on as a group with the
task given until we could beat it. This
was a very good example of a team
building task which included problem
solving by working out who was going
to do what.
We raised money for The St Elizabeth
Hospice children’s charity so we
could have our own statuette of the
elephant Elmer. The Elmer Project
was not just going on in WS training
but it was going on in other schools
and other places. The task was to
design your own patterned Elmer
with a design of your choice. We were
given a sheet with a blank outline of
62 62 •• MARCH ISSUE 2019 40 •• STUDENT LIFE LIFE