9 December 2010 - LLDD Presentation Evening at SCOLA

How privileged I felt to be part of the LLDD Presentation Evening at SCOLA on 9th December. 104 students received their certificates – students of all ages who have chosen to share their lives and their learning experiences with us at SCOLA. The students have worked hard to achieve their goals and receiving their certificates is evidence that they have done this.

A big thank you to all the unsung heroes of the team who have helped to make this happen – the teachers, the administrators, those who have given their time to drive students to the college, the parents, carers and support workers – the list goes on….

The Mayor of Sutton, Cllr Margaret Court, presented the certificates to the students. Also present was Steven Ingram – a SCOLA Governor and Exec Head of Service Management, LBS, amongst other VIPs. Tom Brake MP had a chance to congratulate students and to share a few words with them about their experiences of studying at SCOLA. SCOLA aims to enrich the lives of people and help them to succeed and achieve their goals and it is fantastic to be part of events such as these.

What a wonderful evening and well done to all the students who received their certificates!

Saboohi Famili - Principal

9 December 2010 - A 'thank you' lunch!

I attended the AOC Conference in Birmingham on 16 and 17 November 2010 and was so proud of the team from SCOLA’s Complementary Health Department who had an exhibition stand at the conference, giving free treatments to the delegates.

Georgina Benjamin, Consultancy & Training Co-ordinator - AoC Create Ltd - had this to say about Jacqui McElwee (Head of Complementary Health) and her team‟s contribution to the AoC Conference :

“Thank you so much for your contribution at our Conference - it was such a pleasure having you there, and you really brought your stand to life. I hope you and the students found the experience enjoyable, too. I think it was great that your very own Principal got to see you in action!!”

Thank you, once again, Jacqui and your team for representing SCOLA so well at the conference - it certainly did make me proud to be the Principal of SCOLA!

To say thank you to the team I took them to Lunch at the Maneeya’s Thai Restaurant in Carshalton village to thank them for supporting the college in this way and for showcasing their skills. The students who took part spoke highly of their experience of studying at SCOLA, how they have gained self confidence and how their studies at SCOLA have given them a career to follow. Both the students have done their PTLLS and are now teaching at SCOLA.

The food was excellent and there was a wonderful ambiance in the restaurant – a wonderful time was had by us all!

Saboohi Famili – Principal

08 December 2010 - The story of Horace continues...

Horace awoke with a start. The snow had melted. It was cold, but it was not the snow or the cold that had woken him. A ripple of embarrassment ran through him. His spikes rattled. He recalled the opening to Charles Dickens’ novel, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. Although he did not have a big tail, for a while he’d been drawn to reading everything that had the word ‘tail’ or ‘tale’ in the title. It was just one of those hedgehog things, you know, searching for your identity, why am I here? The usual. He even remembered a poor joke that someone had recounted based on an old radio programme, ‘Listen with Mother’:
“Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin. I have a tale to unfold …”
“Well you can’t be sitting comfortably then!”
No, it wasn’t a stunning joke but it was better spoken than read. Anyway, we digress. ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The opening was:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”
Horace felt that he had done all of that! In the past week!! After he had enjoyed himself at the IAG, he’d been to see the nice ladies in the recruitment centre. They had smiled at him and been extremely helpful in enrolling him. There had been a little hiatus regarding the fees however. What do you charge a two year old hedgehog? Should you enrol him at all or should you insist that he goes to school? But all that had been resolved by a very helpful lady named Jenny. She seemed to know everything about everything. She’d rattled off rules and codes and statistics whilst talking simultaneously to six other people without a hint of impatience. It was bewildering but it had resolved his problems and he was happy. A good start.
Even better was when he went to the clock repair class. It was at the top of the building so he had to take the lift. He couldn’t reach the buttons but he found a walking stick and waved it around a bit until he hit the right button. To an outsider it might have looked a strange sight, a small hedgehog thrashing around in the lift with a walking stick. Someone once said, ‘The ends justify the means.’ I think it was probably Machiavelli. Trotsky then said, ‘The ends determines the means’. Anyway, it worked.
Arriving on the second floor he found the door and went in. It was marvellous. It was fantastic in the true sense of the word. It was another world. There tall men and short men, fat ones and thin ones. There were men with beards and men without, men with glasses and men without. It was all men but, he recalled, not once had they talked about football. Remarkable! Refreshing.
They had all turned to look at him as he entered, but in a kindly and curious way. No-one had commented on his being a hedgehog even though you probably don’t get many in the average clock repair class.
They showed him where to sit and even piled up some books for him so that he could reach the bench. They seemed very impressed when, as he was dismantling his clock, he stored the various cogs on the prickles on his forehead. They didn’t laugh when he sneezed and the whiplash sprayed cogs all around the workshop. They had tutted sympathetically and helped him to retrieve them all, even going down on their hands and knees to look in the dark places under the benches. One of them had a sort of miner’s lamp on his forehead that was really useful for that. They had all said things like, “Ah well, these things will happen.” and other phlegmatic comments. Yes, these clock repair people were a race apart. As was the tutor! He was so knowledgeable, so self-effacing and he had a really good sense of humour. Just what Horace enjoyed.
No, these clock men in the sky really had their hands on time. They were Olympian. When he left at 9.00pm he wondered if they all actually stayed there. If he opened the door any night in the week, would they still be there managing time and ready to turn and greet him again? It was another world. Did they organise the difference between night and day? Did time speed up or slow down as they took their clocks apart and re-assembled them? Did their pendulums cut the holes in the sky that let the rain in? (What was the plural of pendulum? Perhaps that was for a later class.) No, the clock world was great. It was the Pilates where he had had problems.

(To be continued.)

25 November 2010 - Learning & Skills Research Network Conference (LSRN) - London

25 November 2010 - Learning and Skills Research Network Conference (LSRN) in London -Travelling together: evidence for practice in the Learning and Skills Sector.
Building confidence with digital technology: a collaborative action research project focusing on the use of Flip Video cameras to reflect on practical teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (LLS)
The object of the presentation between Canterbury Christ Church University Senior Lecturers Noelle Graal, Jane Evershed and I was to share the key findings of a collaborative action research pilot project on the use of Flip Video cameras to reflect on practical teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (LLS). My participation was to offer a sense of where this work had taken me and my learners since I joined the project two years ago whilst in my second year of the Diploma in Teaching in the LLS (DTLLS).
The filming of one of my French classes was the beginning of a deeper self-evaluation and enabled me to understand the meaning of critical reflection. Having seen myself teaching, I was able to adjust my practice much faster developing and using more learner-centred strategies as personal targets such as "voice on and voice off". As my learners and I had greatly benefited from watching and discussing authentic case studies and videos, I felt it was important to encourage others to do the same and recorded a podcast that students would be able to listen to on the university virtual learning environment with the aim of perhaps considering doing the same.
Since September I started teaching a new group of DTLLS students and in order to build confidence and trust among them and overcome anxiety, I made a conscious effort to plan activities into my lessons using technology so they too could potentially become digitally literate and confident in using Information Learning Technology. They saw first hand how videos can be used as an alternative method of informal and formal assessments or record achievements and how all learners were engaged and included.
As the purpose of LSRN and the annual conference is to encourage collaboration and mutual support, and having been involved in the construction of the Channel Tunnel, I concluded my presentation with a photograph of another great feast of Franco-British engineering: the Viaduct de Millau, the highest bridge in the world crossing the river Tarn in the South of France and designed by Norman Foster. It said “videos allow us to record our journey between our learning experience and its understanding so we can reflect more effectively”.
Our workshop had evidently attracted attention as it was full. Many conference participants could see applications of this device in their context such as observations, tutorials and professional development. It was good to see that later that day when attending another workshop on how to decide whether to pursue a Ph.D. or D.Ed. a participant was interviewing eminent professors including the inspirational Professor Yvonne Hillier, so she could inform her learners.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank many people here. First of all Sutton College of Learning for Adults (SCOLA) for providing continuity in my studies from learning English as a foreign languages over 25 years ago to completing my DTLLS and Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) this summer. This journey would not have been possible without my colleagues and mentors at Canterbury Christ Church University, Jane and Noelle and of course my family who gave me the time and the space to develop this.
But most of all, I would like to thank my students.
Je tiens tout d’abord à remercier toutes celles et tous ceux venant à mes classes de Français avec dans leurs bagages leurs expériences, leur bonne humeur, leur personnalité et leur défi, leurs espérances et leurs attentes. Merci d’avoir bien voulu participer à mes initiatives parfois singulières tout en me donnant la confiance et les moyens d’aller de l’avant depuis 10 ans, surtout dans mes moments de profondes incertitudes personnelles et difficultés professionnelles.
Mais aussi, my current DTLLS students, thank you for allowing me to use a Flip Video in my practice this autumn. I do hope that you will be considering its benefits and perhaps recording your learners’ journey with yours. Consider innovation, creativity and independence so you too, can become researchers and contribute with your own perspective as subject specialist to new heights in our profession and our society as a whole.
Danièle de Mori Calderon
Senior Lecturer
Sutton College of Learning for Adults (SCOLA)
Teacher training, Foreign Languages and Cultural Studies

25 November 2010 - Learning & Skills Research Network

During the nineties I was working for CETS (now CALAT) and it was drawing on a lot of European Social Funding which meant there was a lot of contact between ourselves and European partners so I think this would imply the same.
Quite a lot of visits took place.

All the possibilities for SCOLA seem to be under the programme called GRUNDTVIG which as Sue points out is in Section 4. I think there are quite a lot of openings there which could be tapped into such as:

" motivating individual learners to commit to learning, including through guidance services, out-reach strategies, awareness raising campaigns, validation of non-formal and informal learning, appropriate teaching and learning approaches and partnerships with enterprises; �� using ICT, e-learning and the media to widen access to adult learning; �� developing alternative learning approaches to integrate or reintegrate marginalised and disadvantaged citizens into society and the labour market."

But as I was following through the links in some of the small print to a document which is called LIFELONG LEARNING PROGRAMME, GENERAL CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2011-2013 http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/adult/com558_en.pdf,
I noticed that
the emphasis on establishing partnerships is stressed again and again, and this includes working with other stakeholders and on a local as well as national and international level.
Really, it seems there is a great deal of scope.

Sarah Freeman - Tutor (SCOLA)

02 December 2010- Adverse Weather continues

An even heavier snowfall overnight meant that we had to cancel the classes at all our centres for the second day running. I was also unable to get to the Niace conference - Colleges in the community - that was to be held in central London. The aim of the conference was to report on the strategic role colleges can play and the added value they bring in leading adult learning and serving local communities at a time when colleges are taking responsibility for the shape and balance of educational offer to their locality. On this the 3rd day of a frozen transport network in the Capital it meant no trains going out of Sutton this morning. Some of us however managed to get to work. This included my puppy Lilia who refused to go back to the house after her morning walk and made her way to the College with me! Enjoying the walk in the snow we arrived looking like snowballs! Lots of staff had managed to get in to work and they gave Lilia the warmest of welcomes! Jo Fowler from the SCOLA coffee shop greeted us with her scrumptious Bacon Sarnie's courtesy of SCOLA as a thank you to those who had braved the storm - in many cases literally!
The forecast for 3rd of December seems to be less snow but very cold. We are planning to have classes running at the Sutton Centre tomorrow. Fingers crossed the weather doesn't take a turn for the worse.

Saboohi Famili - Principal

01 December 2010- Chamber of Commerce Breakfast meeting

In almost knee deep snow and icy conditions, it was ambitious to think many people would be able to make their way to the Sutton Chamber Breakfast event held at the Holiday Inn - Sutton. But there was a nice gathering of businesses ready to share their views on Cameron's initiative - the Big Society and to explore what it means for Sutton. It was disappointing that Paul Burstow MP of Sutton and Minister of State for Care Services, was not able to join us. However, we made the most of the event and SCOLA and the Chamber agreed to form a small working group between education and business to come up with a framework that will enable us to make better sense of the Government's Big Society. It became obvious as many attendees expressed they felt there wasn't enough information from the government on the initiative and lack of confidence that this would do much good. We all felt that we needed a better understanding of how this could be achieved, what it would look like and how Business could benefit from it.
There is clearly a role for Education and Training if the Big Society is to manifest itself in civic action. SCOLA have a big role to play. As Sutton's community college and a leading provider of Adult Education it is our duty to help educate the community and to take charge and make decisions. From our point of view the Big Society is to empower civic action to take place with the purpose of improving community life. There are caveats in this sentiment. We need to make sure we do not duplicate or lose the quality of the community engagement activities that already exist. For it to work, training will play a huge role, as will clear and regular communication. SCOLA look forward to hosting and leading on this venture.

Saboohi Famili - Principal

30 November 2010-Back to Brrrrrrilliant Britain!

What happend to the very pleassant 25'C experienced in Gran Canaria?!!! Landed at Gawick after a delayed flight to be faced with heavy snow and freezing temperatures! Staff and students had to be informed that because of the adverse weather conditions a decision would be made about whether or not to cancel classes - staff and students alike were kept updated via the college website. During the course of the day the snow got thicker and thicker and it seemed very unlikely that we would be able to have students safely travelling to our outreach centres. During the next few days we kept a watchful eye on the weather and updated the notice on the website. The safety of our learners comes first in everything that we do. I was pleased to see so many colleagues making the effort to get to work despite the weather - some walking over 6 miles! We also had many who could not get to work who called in to say they would work from home. Excellent to see such high spirits and dedication on the part of the staff.

I visited Caroline Salters' class which is based in a local resource centre - the course supports students with mental health difficulties working to improve their basis computer skills in a small group. On arrival at the centre, it was amazing to see that Caroline had her students waiting outside the centre ready to learn and keen to show me how they have learnt to use the computer to research their favourite topics and improving their writing and reading skills at the same time. One of the students, John, is a musician and he told me his story about playing his music in Japan and how skillfully he had learnt to play his guitar, which he can play with either his left or right hand. Margaret, another student, said she had enjoyed doing research on the Origins of Christmas online and despite a nasty fall she had endured earlier in the term, she was keen to type up her report to put in her portfolio.

That evening we decided to cancel all classes - many colleagues were stranded for hours when trying to travel home. A long day for many. Let's hope as a country we get to a point that we can be better prepared! Haven't I heard that somewhere before?

Saboohi Famili - Principal

29 November 2010- Flying to the sunshine

One of the advantages of booking things online is that you can do this anytime of the day or night. After a few hectic weeks in Oct and Nov I felt it was time to recharge my batteries. Looking for a short break at midnight resulted in bagging a very reasonable holiday to Gran Canaria. If you haven't been it is worth a visit. The most facinating aspect of the trip was meeting a gentleman in his mid 70's at the Bay of Mogan who epitomised what we are doing at SCOLA. He was on a bench by the sea listening to his music and chatting with friends online. When I curiously asked him what he was doing he said he co-ordinates various talks through Skype for those who are interested in world music. He continued to explain that he had been an IT novice a few years back and recently had learnt how to use Skype by attending a short class at his local community church. He said he cannot remember how he got in touch with his friends across the world before. He said: "I can now be anywhere in the world and still keep in touch and for free. Isn't it Marvellous!" I said, "Marvellous indeed" and walking away from him I thought how technology has changed the way generations think and interact. On the flight back I was thinking we should run and iPad club. With Christmas approaching many lucky people will receive an iPad as a gift and would need to learn how to use it. My mum is on the list waiting to see if Santa thinks she has been a good girl this year or not. I should check with Rita, her excellent Flower Arrangement tutor, who she speaks very highly of! Considering she is 79 and so very active she ought to be in Santa's good books....

Saboohi Famili - Principal