Hi, Perhaps not all of you know but we are slowly slowly testing how to work with secondary schools. We have a beta “enrichment” programme here, but there has not been much uptake, and we’ve been slightly reticent to push it more until we figure out how to involve volunteers better.
I was wondering how many of the fixer-Restarters here are STEM Ambassadors, and whether making the link with that programme might make it easier for you to get time off during the workday to volunteer at Restart Parties in/with schools? I believe @benski is? Anyone else?
I’m lucky enough that my boss is supportive of the STEM ambassador membership (in fact he told me to sign up!) but also general “extracurricular” stuff. I was able to do the monthly volunteer takeover on Restart Radio too.
So yes I can probably find time to get involved here and there
I look forward to hear more about your findings from testing the secondary schools
programme and how to get volunteers involved.
Divya and I, we are slowly shaping our next year objective for Leicestershire. Schools will become our target once we have completed the current outreach programme. We have links that we want to leverage. If you have any advices for potential fundings, grants that could cover one or two part-time pay and travel expenses, I would like to know so I can write up a proposal for what we are planning to do in Leicestershire.
Divya was explaining to me that the stem ambassadors scheme also support in the recruitment of the volunteers for the Code Club. may not be completely cue up on how it works so it may be best to speak to him.
One thing you can try in the meantime during your outreach programme is to schedule some of the Restart Parties at schools, perhaps in afterschool times, or on Saturdays. The one we had together with Archer Academy was a success!
I’ve put it on my list for early 2019 to reach out to STEM Ambassadors. If @Divya_Pujara can shed any light onto how STEM Ambassadors link with Code Club, that would be super helpful! If anything, it seems to be a useful recruitment channel:
I hope you are all well. happy new year.
I am writing to find out if you have any slides about the school programme that I could hack.
I am presenting on the 2nd of february to teachers and parents on ‘‘how to bring repair into schools and at home’’ so any resources will be great. I am planning to repeat such presentation over the year. let me know.cheerios
thank you janet for your prompt reply. congrats by the way on getting a spot on bbc breakfast. we were thrilled here in leicester
I will work on the presentation and will get in touch if i need support.
thanks a lot
I’ve registered my interest in the material which I may be able to pitch to the D&T or Science lead at my local secondary school. I’ll let you know how it goes. a 10-week program would run for a term, was it difficult to persuade the schools to use the material from outside, or did you have contacts there already?
Great to hear! We had a friendly contact with a Governor in the school we delivered these in. We also got the over-worked IT technician on side, and helped him fix some of the school laptops. The real challenge, to allow educators to replicate it on their own, was providing the practice “kit” (game controllers, phones, etc) where they wouldn’t have to do too much preparation. We still haven’t cracked that.
Hi Janet my apologies for my tardiness in responding to this enquiry,
My understanding of the situation regarding this may be very much out of date and may have changed as the knowledge is several years old and I haven’t yet had the time to update myself.
From when I looked into to it, The Code Club was an unrelated initiative that fell into the overall remit of what the stem.org.uk was trying to achieve. The programme seemed reasonably agnostic as to what stem activities are run and merely provided a resource to enable stem related activities to be run by different organsiatiosn/schools/teachers etc and connect with stem ambassadors and volunteers. As part of that remit stem ambassadors that register are interviewed and have a background check done so it is known that it is safe for them to work with children, there is occasionally an optional extended interview with some training included in basic safeguarding principle. This provision is handled by local provider that I presume are contracted for the service.
An additional advantage was that at the time i was investigating a DBS/CRB check performed by an organisation such as an employer or school was not transferable and the cost of that check needed to be incurred again and the checks performed again for every organisation. The stem ambassador programme organised and performed the checks in a way that was essentially transferable as volunteers are recruited by different schools etc via their database. So the DBS/CRB check only needed to be done once even if the volunteer was going to work at several schools since the school did the recruiting and first contact via the stem/code club system.
As such the code club was leveraging an existing system with wider objectives and was able to do so because it fell with the remit of it’s activities. I would assume this was done formally rather than informally.
If fixers were to work with schools doing after school repair clubs then I would assume we could leverage a similar system. First get the fixer registered and checked as a stem ambassador and then recruited via the system as a volunteer to go to the school. Note the school would also register as a venue and go through the system to recruit the volunteer,
If as I hoped would be the case science or design and technology teachers were going to train up as fixers or deliver a fixer syllabus to their own pupils and students, DBS/CRB checks would already have been done internal to that organisation and the stem ambassador system would not be required.
I hope this helps a little but suspect its nothing more than what you may already have known. I’m not in a position to categorically confirm how the relationship was set up between code club and the stem ambassador programme or if it still runs in the same way.
