LoveLearning Teacher5aDay

Acklam Grange School held its second love learning project at the end of this summers term. Both teaching and non-teaching staff were tasked with having to learn a new skill. The only stipulation being that it couldn’t be anything to do with teaching. It’s important to remember what it was like to be a child and learn a challenging new skill. Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone.

The project links in the #teacher5aday #Learn aspect and it bred some very interesting results, which provided staff with some memorable, funny and maybe even scarring moments. The majority of the staff's entries can be found here www.agsinspire.com/love-learning with over 50 members of staff participating this year, it certainly was tough competition.

At this point I would like to thank all of the generous sponsors for their donations to the cause. I was blown away by the positive support we had from many companies and individuals. For this I would like to thank you all.

Vision For Education
£40 Amazon Vouchers, £30 M&S Vouchers, £20 Next Vouchers, £20 TK Maxx Vouchers, 3 Bottles of wine

Matific
£100 iTunes Vouchers

AQA Maths 
1 Year fee subscription to Exampro for the subject of your choice

Hywel Roberts
Signed book - Oops: Helping children learn accidentally

Lisa Ashes
Signed Book - Manglish

Matt Bromley
Signed Book - Teach: The Journey to Outstanding

Animate to Educate
£15 iTunes Vouchers and Chocolate

Roberts Fishbar
Fish ‘n Chips for 2

I personally learnt how to navigate to a destination without using a sat nav. I had lessons off the DoE Leader in our school Sarah Watt and was then tasked with planning and driving to a village 30 minutes away, to our locally famous ice cream and sweet shop. I was immensely proud of myself when I didn't get lost, as I am well known for getting lost in new and old places.

Here is my yummy ice cream and also the old fashioned sweet shop, which I had a massive order list for. It seems the maths department are partial to sweets.

Alongside this I also learnt how to play the recorder and formed part of a recorder choir with the female members of the maths department. (Of course the songs we chose were from frozen including ‘Let it Go’ and ‘Do you want to build a snowman’. What can I say the book came with colouring in pages!

My two entries seem rather unimpressive though when you compare it to my personal top 5.

1)      Sean ODonnell 

His daughter is severely deaf, her mother and herself receive weekly sign language lessons. She has been nagging Sean to learn it to, so Sean used ‘love learning’ to learn how to do the basics and sign the alphabet to his deaf daughter.

2)      Dawn Heeley-King
After partially amputating her thumb 12 years ago and only being able to drive automatic cars, she learned how to drive a manual car again.

3)      The DT Faculty
They decided to learn how to walk over hot coals, later they found out Youtube doesn't explain everything. Now at this point I would like to say they did sign a disclaimer, which was lucky as one member of the department had to take a trip to A&E afterwards. It’s safe to say don’t try this at home!! The video can be seen below. 

The department fittingly won an AQA subscription to Exampro and also Ross McGill - 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding Lessons, in the hopes that one of the ideas would be better and safer.

4)      Jane Darbyshire
Learnt how to surf and the North Sea! Now this may seem a small thing however Jane has a massive fear of her head being under the water and had to conquer this first.

5)      Lisa Antill
Learnt how to cook and EAT a squirrel!!!! Apparently it tasted yummy. I’m not sure I will be trying this anytime soon!

There were many more amazing entries, such as learning to shoot, bake and sell cakes in coffee shops, nurse a gecko to full health, re-floor a stair case, wine tasting, paddle boarding, speaking foreign languages, the list goes on. A huge well done I think is needed for the staff who went the extra mile at the end of term. I’m really impressed with the creativity of many, I think I need to up my game next year! All entries can be seen here.

Again I would like thank all of the sponsors who made it able to give all entrants a reward of some form for their efforts with the school adding a few extra prizes to make this happen.