This man WAS the most powerful Leader in the World for 8 years!!!!!!

Report on ComeniusTrip to Thessaloniki

Scott Bain and Matthew Reid 2I1 Kirkwall Grammar School.

Tuesday 13^th January 2009.

We left KGS at 1:30 pm for Kirkwall Airport. We met the 2 representatives from Aquatera there. Our flight to Edinburgh was at 3.40 which got us in at 5:00pm. We had enough time to have some dinner and a look about the airport before our flight to Gatwick at 8:10pm. We arrived at Gatwick at 9:35pm. Our hotel was just 5 minute bus ride away. After settling in our rooms we all met for a drink before bed.

Wednesday 14^th January 2009

We all met in the lobby early before getting the bus back tot he airport. After cheeking in we went for a coffee. Our flight was at 08:33hrs to Thessanloniki. The flight took three hours. During the flight we has a drink and something to eat. We landed at 14:00hrs, local time. Difference is 2hours ahead of UK time. It was cold and wet when we arrived. We took a taxi to our hotel, the Grand Palace Hotel, which was the nearest to the school we were going to visit.

We settled into our rooms before meeting for lunch. After lunch we spent time on the hotel’s computers. As the conference didn’t start until the next day, we went for a walk with Mr Henning and discovered a Lidl store. We made our first purchases in Greece, paying for juice and sweets for our room in Euros.

In the evening all the teacher from the nine schools, and us, went for a meal in a traditional Greek restaurant. I t was great sampling the local food and culture. We think we all had a good time before heading back to our hotel exhausted.

Thursday 15^th January 2009

We got up early for breakfast, which was great, and then we all walked to the school.

The school was called the 1st Geniko Lykeio, Menemenis. There were over thirty pupils from Orkney, Spain, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Denmark Austria and Hungary.

The pupils got a talk from the two representatives of Aquatera, whilst the teachers attended a planning meeting. The representatives from Aquatera spoke about their work and Climate Change. The second half of the session was question and answer and writing down our ideas about our ideas that might help to prevent more climate change.

For lunch we walked to a local cafe, when walked back to the school with Mr Henning and Mr Diack the long way so we could get some exercise and fresh air.

When we got back to school we wrote down and discussed what we and our and the others did about

climate change, for example recycling. We also looked at how countries were being affected by climate change

and what further things we could do as a schools to try and help. For example, reduce the number of lights in a school, walk to school, use rain water to flush the toilets, switch off all computers at the end of the day.

The Aquatera presentation and our listed ideas are available on the Comenius blog at http://web2class.edublogs.org

Friday 16^th of January 2009

After breakfast, we went on a sight seeing trip. Our destination

was Halkidiki, a very popular seaside area for both Greeks and

tourist from across Europe. We stopped at a beautiful beach and

everyone took lots of photographs.

We stopped for a drink during our sight seeing trip and eventually

had our lunch at a beautiful fish restaurant. All the pupils had time

to mix and have a chat in order to find out more about each others

countries, schools, like and dislikes. It was good fun.

Saturday 17^th of January 2009

After breakfast we got a taxi into the centre of the city and walked to

the famous ‘White Tower’. The tower is called the White Tower as

during the wars with Turkey, the Turks used to chop prisoners heads

off from the top of the tower so all local people could see what

happens to rebels. As a result the tower was stained red from all

the blood. Once the Turks were defeated, the Turkish prisoners

were made to paint the tower white so that all traces of the

be-headings were removed. This is why the tower is still called

today the ‘White Tower’.

Inside the tower to-day is now a museum which displays the history of Thessaloniki throughout the ages. The history was well presented by means of pictures and audio tapes which we listened to as we went round and up the towers 6 floors.

At the top you could walk outside and get a great view of the Mediterranean and the modern large city. Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece.

Sunday 18^th January 2009

After breakfast we packed our bags, then took time to walk all the way into the city for a final sight see-ing Mr Henning and Mr Diack showed us some more ancient building that are still preserved in the modern city.

We returned to the hotel to collect our bags and went to the airport for our fight back to London. We got back to London at 16:30hrs. We went back to the hotel we stayed at on our way to Greece and enjoyed a good evening meal before going to bed early.

Monday 19^th January2009

Flew back to Orkney via Glasgow and arrived back on Orkney at 12:00hrs. Mr. Diack told us he expected to see the both of us in school the next morning!!!

Scott Bain & Matthew Reid.

30 pupils and 9 staff from across the 6 Orkney Schools of Ambition attended a very full and demanding days training programme at Kirkwall Town Hall on Thursday 4th December 2008.

The aims of the morning presentation, presented by Janet Trevanion, were a preparation for the kind of deeper, emotional but also personally analytical thinking that designing and taking part in Metasaga entails.

It is aimed to bring the participants on a ‘journey’ of self analysis and an exploration of how they personally answered leadership skills and then how these fit in with their own personal values.

The morning session was a preparatory session for the Metasaga input that followed in the afternoon, and as such complimented the work to be covered in the afternoon.

The afternoon session, presented by Kate Coutts, was devoted to introducing Metasaga. Metasagas allow people to reflect upon important life issues, and thus help take forward the way people think about their own life and learning e.g. find yourself in the world around you.

Each of the 6 schools planned to take their own Metasaga about the catchment area of their own school and identify key stopping points. Pupils will research each stop. The school will create a Metasaga in their community. There will be a live version and a virtual version on the internet.

Over three days of 8th, 9th and 10th of October junior pupils from all of Orkney’s secondary schools attended a SoA leadership course led by 4 senior pupils from Kirkwall Grammar School and Stromness Academy.

Half the group of 27 pupils undertook an outdoor leadership challenges set up by Richard Croft and his outdoor education team, while the other half worked on a range of leadership activities with the senior pupils supported by Scott Goddard from Live-n-Learn.

Pupils at Work:

Seniors at Work:

The next stage in this programme is to take it out to all six secondary schools and work with the pupils from these schools who attended the Hoy event, in order to cascade the leadership skills to all secondary pupils in Orkney.

This will be a major step in the process of empowering our pupils to become more procative in taking the right decisions for themselves in terms of academic and vocational decisions they will have to make over the next fews years of their lives.

This development clearly ties in with the ambitions of  ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’ where the curriculum that is provided is now more focused upon catering for the wholisitic needs of our young people fo the 21st century.

Senior pupils from Stromness Academy and Kirkwall Grammar school held a business engagement evening last Wednesday at Kirkwall Town Hall in an attempt to establish more formal and sustainable links with local businesses and agencies.

A gathering of over 15 business and agency representatives attended the meeting.

The program for the evening entailed a welcome from the pupils and highlighting the experiences and opportunities they had already undertaken in both the school and out of school working environments.

Following on from the senior pupils, two guest speakers, Mrs. Marilyn Richard, Assistant Director of Education, OIC, and Mrs. Hilda De Felica, Learning Unlimited Scotland gave presentations to the audience.

Mrs. Richards gave an overview of the learning intentions of the new curriculum for the 21^st century entitled ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’, and proposed new National Qualifications. Central to these initiatives is the need to provide a curriculum that provides real opportunities for skills for life and skills for work. The proposed National Qualifications will allow for a new raft of qualifications which will provide accreditation for vocational courses undertaken during the third and fourth years of a pupil’s secondary school life. In addition to this, there will be separate National Qualifications to assess Literacy and Numeracy competency.

Mrs. De Felica provided a series of thought provoking statistics in relation to information age of the 21^st century. For example, by the time a student has reached the 4^th year of their degree course, the information taught in the first 2 years will already be out of date. There is a clear need to provide a transformed curriculum that will meet the needs of our pupils and future employers faced with globalisation and emerging new economies of the world. e.g. how will Scotland be able to respond to the impact of China upon the world economy? In attempt to address the changing needs of schools and businesses, examples of joint school and business projects across Scotland were presented. The ability to make learning ‘real’ was stressed as a major outcome of these experiences and as such, pupils had a better understanding of the curriculum being delivered in school. These experiences have also had an appositive impact upon subsequent examination results.

During the second half of the evening the senior pupils ran a question time event, where six questions were asked of their guests.

1. What do you see is the value of wider achievements in supporting an application for a job?

2. What skills, generic or specific, do you want from potential future employees?

3. What importance do you place upon formal qualifications? Do businesses understand the current SQA qualification structure?

4. What leadership skills do you see as important?

5. What ITC skills do you think future employees should possess?

6. How do you envisage they could contribute to the curriculum so as to ensure future employees are better skilled for the workplace?

The pupils and guests wrote down responses to the questions for future collation and feed back.

To conclude the evening guests and pupils had the opportunity to view the wide range of responses and then ask further questions of the guest presenters and pupils.

Initial evaluation from the evening reports that the event was both informative and productive as some of the guests have initiated further discussion as to how best take forward closer links with schools in terms of supporting a transformed curriculum.

S6 Leadership Course Kirkwall Town Hall

15 S6 pupils from Kirkwall Grammar and Stromness Academy attended a 2.5 days course on Leadership course delivered by Mr Scott Goddard from ‘Live-n-Learn’.

The group was split into two so that half the group could be working with Mr. Scott Goddard at Kirkwall Town Hall, while the other half would out with the OIC Outdoor Ed team led by Mr. Richard Croft and his team.