What an Amazing Week!

First Week Back!

We are back together and super excited to see what this year has in store for us.

This week we have had a real big focus on Kindness, what this looks like and how we can be kind to others. We aimed to answer the GQ – How does the power of kindness impact on your life and the life of others?

Wednesday – Crafting Kindness Gifts

Crew Rashford considered what kindness is and looks like? We collaborated together on ideas that we would show kindness in and around our community.

With all our resources and ideas, we created beautiful gifts. Some students made origami flowers, shapes and butterflies, some wrote lovely messages on postcards, some were creative with the resources and made wond’s with kind messages such as “You are Wonderful”, some also hand painted pebbles and gifted bells as a security system for theft.

Here they are working hard and ensuring they have checked for quality and craftsmanship!

Here are some more of the amazing gifts Crew Rashford created.

Thursday – Micro Adventure at Lakeside Shopping Centre

On Thursday we embarked on our adventure, connecting with the world to spread kindness within the local community.

The visit to Lakeside shopping centre was a massive success and there was a real buzz around the place. Members of the public were blown away with the generosity of our students and their gifts but smiles on the faces of those around us and our students too.

It was fabulous to see crew members step outside of the comfort zones and challenge themselves to approach members of the public. I was super proud of Crew Rashford for stepping up to the plate, articulating themselves well and having lovely meaningful conversations with shoppers around the centre. Quite often there was no physical gift given, but for our crew to have a chat with shoppers and make someone’s day.

It really showed the essence of Crew, it shows how we support each other and play to our strengths.

We thought it was important to remind ourselves of the purpose of this exercise as we went along and students made a scrapbook of the micro adventure to Lakeside.

Here are some of the reflections…

Friday – Solo Adventure and Crew Pledges

With all these acts of kindness, we considered that we also need to take time to reflect on the week as a whole. This was an opportunity for Crew Rashford to spend time individually and understand how they can be even more kind in the future.

There was a real mixed bag of emotions, some found it lonely. Realising that they enjoy being around others… while others found it relaxing.

Whilst we have been focused on acts of kindness we also revisited our character traits. We discussed these in many ways, as a crew they look at themselves and how they would like to display these this year. They considered what compassion looks like, how we show respect, when we might need to have courage, what is integrity and how we can ensure we consider craftsmanship and quality is encompassed in our work.

We made pledges as a crew on what kind of things we want to do differently this year compared to Year 7. We really dug deep into what this is and how we can achieve this. As a crew we pledge to hold crew members accountable for them.

After a jam packed week, we also had time to let loose and enjoy some time outdoors. So E27 went and enjoyed a fab game of rounders and cricket. It’s safe to say that there are some members of crew who are slightly more competitive than others 😃. I’m not sure of the score, but Crew Rashford did a pretty good job of communicating and having fun.

Here are some action pics.

It’s been an amazing week and I am looking forward to the year ahead.

Next week is our Outward Bound trip to Ullswater. I honestly cannot wait to spend even more time with Crew. Build a great relationship and deeper foundations to become a stronger unity and crew family.

We are the mighty Crew Rashford! 😀