Hello,
As part of our birthday celebrations we are are launching a retrospective of the first 10 years of Pivotal Education. We will be adding a new page to our website with stories of training and coaching past! To do this we need your help.
If you have a 'Pivotal Memory' from the last 10 years, please do share it with us. We are looking for stories from the early days as well as more recent tales. You can comment on training days, coaching, conversations with the Pivotal team .... Give us your success stories, problems that have been faced and funny situations. We want to hear them all.
Your stories will be included in the retrospective on our website and we will let you know when this is launched.
To get the ball rolling Paul Dix has written down an account of Pivotal's first ever paid job - the drama workshop from hell:
Way back when.....
In the Spring of 2000 on an island in Wales a plan was hatched by two battle scarred teachers to make change in education on a wider scale. Exasperated by the lack of intelligent training (INSET days on Differentiation involving 250 PowerPoint slides etc.) they decided to do something about it.
On a wing and a prayer and calls of, 'You'll be supply teaching within a month' from the mutterers at the back of the staff rooms Joe May and Paul Dix handed in their resignations to two incredulous headteachers and stepped out of the plane. Leaving their parachutes and teacher planners behind them.
Pivotal's first job was at a Secondary School in a disadvantaged area of Wolverhampton where we were tasked with re-engaging a group of particularly tricky Yr 9 boys. A great deal of preparation was given to the job. I remember going out late one night with Joe filming the queues outside clubs in Birmingham so we could work on characters they might identify with. We had a range of theatrical props including masks, wigs and hats. We arrived well resourced and well planned.. Ready to impress, ready to convert these wayward 'yoof'.
To be honest it didn't go well from the start. We soon realised that they had no interest in us, our workshop, our lengthy planning or our attempts to engage them. We thought that it might be better to get working actively as soon as possible and distributed the props and costume. It was then that it kicked off. Screams of 'Hats and masks! Hats and masks! Hats and masks!', interrupted the shaky calm as students lost control and began running around the space in an over excited fervour. Some children were 'pinging' the masks back into the faces of the wearers. Others took the opportunity to do impressions of 'your Mum'. I don't think that they were usually allowed to play with the props. It took a good 10 minutes to reign them back in again as we tried to regain our composure and hastily restructured the session. It was not the perfect start we had dreamed of.
This was clearly not going to be an easy road.
Please email your stories to Ellie Dix at ellie@pivotaleducation.com
Many thanks,
Ellie Dix
Pivotal Education Ltd
020 70001735
Date: 17/01/2011
