Group Meeting with Year 9 Students

This piece describes a typical Year 9 group work introduction to Y-gen services.  It prepares students for starting to draft their individual action plan which will be developed over the following three years or so....................

Monday morning.  First port of call is a school in Barnet to meet with a group of Year 9 students.  I had arranged to meet them in a group to start with - to introduce myself, explain about the service and support that they can expect to have from Y-gen and to explain that I will then have individual meetings with each of them.

Two girls (T and H) arrive first, looking decidedly nervous.  It transpires that they thought they had been called to have injections!  They are greatly relieved to find that my case contains a number of Y-gen pens, papers and eco-friendly bags but definitely no needles. 

A very anxious-looking student (R) sticks his head around the door asking me if he is in the right place.  He had been told to see a ‘Korean lady' and says "you don't look Korean?"  I reassure him that he may have misheard and asked if his teacher actually said to come to a meeting with ‘the careers lady'.  He looks relieved and sinks into a chair.  I tell him that he doesn't need to get a pen out as we won't be doing any writing. 

We are waiting for one more student who arrives just in time, wearing half a PE kit with his shirt untucked, tie at half mast and blazer slung over one shoulder.  "Sorry Miss, I forgot about this and got changed for PE - that's why I'm late."  I assure him that he may be able to join his PE lesson a bit later.  "Whatever, Miss but next time can I miss Maths?" he asks.

So, we all introduce ourselves and I ask them what they know about Y-gen.  Blank looks all round.  One of the girls (T) suggests that we may be something to do with electricity but she is soon corrected by R who says "It's about careers innit - stupid!" 

I tell them that a lot of people think that Y-gen is an electrical power company just because of the name.  In fact, we do provide power but a different sort of power - the type of power that enables young people to find out about options and choices in their lives and to make better decisions regarding these choices. 

We look through a leaflet which outlines some of the support that Y-gen can offer - including issues around planning for the future, qualifications, jobs, training, relationships, managing money and finances, smoking and drugs, keeping safe and so on.  D asks, hopefully, if they will get paid for coming to this meeting.  I reply that, unfortunately, we are unable to pay them for their attendance but, hopefully, it will pay off in the long term.  He doesn't seem convinced but I hope that, eventually, he will feel that it was worthwhile. 

I explain that our service is confidential and if they want to talk to one of our personal advisers about anything we won't tell anyone else without their permission.  Unless, of course, they tell us something that means somebody is in danger.  They ask me for an example and I say that if they told me they were making bombs in their garden shed I would obviously need to tell somebody.  They agree that this seemed reasonable.

We talk about their annual review meetings and I explain that I will be writing an action plan with each of them later in the week.  If they are happy for me to do so, I will take copies of their plan to the annual review meeting to share with other people there.  I tell them that we will only write things that they are happy to share with others.  They agree that this is OK. 

We look at the action plan form and discuss the kind of things that we might write in each section and how it might help them.  D is particularly pleased to see that other people will have action points as well as him.  He asks, "Can we write in there that Mr Shaw has to give me top marks for our history exam - ‘cos then my dad will buy me a new Wii?"  I suggest that, in this case, we would need to write "D to work hard to complete his homework, assignments and revision in order to achieve top marks in the history exam" under the section for ‘student's action point'.  He agrees that this would be fair. 

I ask them if they have any further questions but, as it is nearly time for morning break, they are keen to move on.  I make sure that they all have copies of the Y-gen leaflet and the "Which Way Now" book and suggest that they take them home to show their parents/carers.  I give each of them a snazzy Y-gen eco-friendly bag (useful for wet swimming kit), a pen (useful for writing with, of course, but also with Y-gen's phone number on it in case of emergencies), a memory stick (which we could, perhaps, use for saving their action plan) and my business card with my email address and other contact details on it.

I check that they all know where and when we will be meeting later in the week and, as the bell rings, they exit in a flurry of string bags and dropped memory sticks.  As I am packing up my papers, D sticks his head back round the door to say "Maths is period 3 on Thursday Miss.  Pleeeeeeease can I come and see you then?"  I promise that I will see what I can do.