Student Voice goes to Birmingham....
With the great success of Student Voice in our School, representatives from Girls Model Student Voice Leadership Team were invited to give a presentation at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust conference on Wednesday 26th November 2008. Mr Graham, Mrs Mairs, Sheena Mann, Rebekah Kirk and I all flew off to Birmingham on the 25th November to attend this conference; we were all looking forward to it. It was at this conference 2 years ago that Mrs Mairs heard of student voice. It was amazing to think that we were now presenting at the same conference on Student Voice. Of course we were very excited to represent our school and tell all those at the conference about Student Voice within our School.
On a less serious note we allowed time to chill out before the nerves of presenting kicked in so we enjoyed a nice meal at the Pizza Express on the first night and went to the cinema to see James Bond, thanks to Mr Graham! After our pizza and cinema viewing we enjoyed the walk back to our hotel, where we all said good night in the lobby and left to prepare for the big day ahead.
On Wednesday the 26th Sheena, Rebekah and I got up early to meet Mrs Mairs and Mr Graham to take the 5 minute walk across the street to the ICC, this was the modern building where the conference was scheduled to take place.
When we arrived in the ICC there were a lot of people there, including school principals, representatives from the Education and Library Boards, members of the Specialist School and Academy Trust, school teachers and many more not only from Belfast or Birmingham but all over the country and afar.
At first we were very nervous about our presentation as there were a lot of important people to impress. Although we did feel confident as we had spent many weeks preparing with Mrs Mairs and Mr Graham.
We checked into the ICC, we all got goodie bags with pen drives, stationary and information about the ICC in them. Before our presentation that day we were treated to lunch in the ICC, were Mr Graham mingled and met old friends - as always.
Then it was time, we set our presentation up with the help of the staff at the ICC. Then we were on! Mr Graham told the audience of our School background and a little about our success.
Then Mrs Mairs continued with a nice speech about how Student Voice has developed in school. She introduced me, AND I TALKED ABOUT research which Student Voice was involved in. I then introduced Rebekah to talk further on the learning partnership scheme which has been developing. After Rebekah had presented, she introduced Sheena who talked about her trip to Sri Lanka through the Dreams and Teams project in school.
After the presentation it was question time, believe me the audience were not shy about asking questions which could have put us on the spot but we all worked together and we impressed them all with our answers.
I have to admit Sheena, Rebekah and I were all very nervous about the presentation because we were representing the school. However, it was worth all the stress as the audience complemented us afterwards and some even took the School e-mail address to stay in contact.
We impressed the audience so much that a principal who was staying in our hotel even complemented us in the hotel because word had spread of our presentation. This made the experience even more rewarding.
Later on that night we reflected on the trip while enjoying burgers and chips at the burger bar by the canal. Then we set off home the next morning bright and early.
We have all achieved great confidence skills as people as well as students, Rebekah
Awesome trip, we all felt really proud after the presentation, Sheena
We all really enjoyed the trip; we bonded as a team and got to share our success of Student Voice which we all feel really passionately aboutHaileigh
