It has been another busy week at Medtia Square where, once again, we have been thinking outside the box to see how we can engage our young people in the workplace. 18 months ago we decided to set up The Atrium Café, one of the best decisions we have made! Over the past 18 months young people from across our schools have benefited from this offer and have accessed meaningful work experience opportunities at The Atrium, where real work skills have been gained. We are now looking to replicate this model and are exploring a number of opportunities and business ideas within Oldham. We are looking at stalls in the market, shops and even a mobile enterprise van where we can change what we sell! I will keep you posted of course but needless to say, we don’t sit still for long and we have lots of irons in the fire!

This week, I have also met with some key social care colleagues at Oldham Council. They are keen to work with New Bridge on looking at how we can offer a supported employment service via social care funding to adults in Oldham who may no longer be in education. This is a really exciting development and is something we are keen to support the council with. Again, I’ll keep you posted on our developments.

This week’s ‘A Day in the Life of….’ comes from The Royal Oldham Hospital and our Bridging the Gap student, Tara. Over to you, Tara..

A day in life of Tara 
Catering Assistant at the Royal Oldham Hospital

My placement is in the Café Royal and my working day starts at 9am. I have to wear the café uniform and my ID badge. I need to remember to take my apron, my hat and my gloves and wear my safety shoes..

The first thing I do is wash my hands. Then I ask Bev, my supervisor, what she wants me to do. It could be filling up the crisp racks, putting them in rows..

It could be cleaning lots of tables, making sure they are ready for new customers..

I sort out my own equipment – I have to make sure I use the correct spray, I have to wear my yellow gloves and I need to make sure my cloth is squeezed out so I don’t leave the tables wet..

The drinks fridges always need filling up. I have to put the drinks in the right order, making sure the cold ones are at the front..

I sometimes serve customers. I am polite and helpful but it’s not my favourite job..

I even cook eggs (it can get messy, though!)

Making paninis is my newest skill..

..and I am good at cheese on toast..

There is always a lot to do and I love this job. These are some of my work team, I like working with them – they have taught me lots of new skills and they make the job fun..

I work in the café until 2pm and then it’s back to class to do some Asdan work or write my diary – ‘It’s a hard knock life!’

Thursday saw Medtia Square become a broadcasting centre as Digit4ll took part in this year’s BBC School Report – Mr Bright has the details..

This week was the annual BBC News School Report which we have taken part in every year for the last 10 years. This year our three IT pathway Digit4ll groups came together at our Medtia site to report on the news of the day. It was such a great day! The goal of the day is to help students gain a better insight into how the news is presented to us. It’s a full-on day but the students loved it..

The day started at 9am by gathering news stories from reputable sources online or from newspapers before the students then wrote down the 5 Ws (What, Where, Who, When and Why) of each story ready to feed back to the team. We then had an editorial meeting where the top six stories were chosen by the democratic process of throwing your hands in the air!!!

It worked. The stories turned out to be those that the students wanted to report on. There were 30 students in total so it was a little squashed at times but once the teams were in place they were off around the town of Oldham to interview other people for their thoughts on the stories. Be thankful you weren’t in town between the hour of 11:30am and 12:30pm as you would’ve been accosted by the New Bridge reporting team! We had a lot of reports and interviews, some we definitely couldn’t air, but in the end we managed to get a balanced mix of views..

The aim of the day was to get a better understanding of the way the news is reported but some of the team forgot the interviewee is the one who should be being recorded not the interviewer; you’ll see what I mean when you watch the report! There were also some reports that gave such passionate opinions on the current state of affairs that we also had to pull from the final report but the students learnt that the news must remain impartial and only the facts must be presented.

So 2pm was upon us and the students took turns in their teams to present the news live-to-air. There were a few bloopers, most of which will never see the light of day, but they read from the autocue brilliantly and performed in front of a green screen when it mattered. Whether it was news researcher, news writer, news presenter, camera operator, sound recorder or interviewer, there was a role for everyone..

The truth is our students are very aware of the current news stories and fully engaged in what is going on in the world. I’m always surprised and amused in equal measures on the BBC News Report Days, and this year it was no different. I hope you have enjoyed viewing the photos from the day and I am sure you will find the report itself very informative..

I’d like to thank all the staff who helped on the day and congratulate the students on another successful news report.

This week’s Worker of the Week goes to Tia, one of our pre interns, whose family have recently had a bereavement. Tia has still managed to get into work each day and has coped really well despite the sad circumstances. We are very proud of you Tia and send our thoughts to you and your family at this difficult time.

Letters have been sent home this week regarding two upcoming events on the last week of term, the first being our coffee morning which will take place at 10am on Monday 26th March. We look forward to seeing you all there! We are also hosting a ‘City of Tomorrow’ day on the last day of term across all sites, where our students will be asked to think about how Oldham will look in the future before building their own models of our ‘City of Tomorrow’! More information on the day can be found here.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Director of Employment & Co Head of Site at Medtia Square

You can view our previous blog entries here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham