School Café! – King Edward VII School, Sheffield, UK
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School Café! – King Edward VII School, Sheffield, UK

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The Year 8 pastoral team saw the potential for NEMESIS to tie in with South Yorkshire Police’s Inspiring Youth programme as it fits well with the ‘community’ element. The group all had different ideas and, through doing the NEMESIS ‘traffic light’ activity from the resource bank to spot local problems they decided they wanted to have more jobs for young people because they wanted to develop their skills, make some money, meet people, gain work experience and have fun! 

OPERA activity to co-decide which to put into action

The project that came out of the OPERA activity

Initially, students were thinking of 3 different projects:

Pet sitting

The students want to trial this on friends and family and let their services spread through word of mouth. So far, they’ve created a form for people wishing their pet to be sat to complete and have thought about how they can offer a good service through caring for animals. 

Babysitting

This idea developed because one boy’s Dad works with some single parents and would tell him how difficult it can be to find childcare.  The boys want to start by babysitting the children of friends and family and are creating an application form for potential customers to fill in.

Snack service in school

One group noticed that school staff are busy and the school is on 2 sites so what began as a potential delivery service got focussed onto a drinks provision service, with biscuits, for busy school staff. 

1, 2, 3 action!

Students analysed what skills and resources (resources or otherwise) each project would need. They then identified which they could do themselves and where they might need help to work out what and who they needed to move their project forward.

Pet sitting group’s analysis of skills needed to carry out the project

The students finally settled on doing one project – the snack service. They thought it would be useful to find out what drinks and snacks they wanted and how much they would pay so they carried out market research amongst staff to find out what people want and how much they’d pay, noting that vegan biscuits would be welcome. 

The questionnaire used to find out what teachers would want from the snack service

They had their first café in February 2020. They were positioned by the entrance to their school site so that staff could easily grab a tea or coffee on their way in at the start of the day and at the beginning of the break. Staff really appreciated this service and more sessions would have taken place if the covid crisis hadn’t happened. Speaking to the students before the session showed that they were able to talk about the competences they were developing and they were astute in noting that even if they didn’t achieve what they initially set out to or couldn’t carry out their project they were still developing useful skills. They specifically mentioned reflection and teamwork.

I really enjoyed working with the children on this project and especially how one group of students, in particular, included a student who was in a different social circle to and academically weaker than them so that he could take part. They showed real empathy, compassion and sensitivity, which is so important in these social projects.

Jen Wall