Alice Ryan, The White Rose Academies Trust Business Officer Apprentice, continues to write about experiences from working within the Trust; read Alice's second blog below:
I am now coming to the end of my sixth week at The White Rose Academies Trust. Just typing that out shocks me, as I cannot believe how fast my time here has flown.
When I look back to the first day I started, I am able to see how far I have progressed. I started here overwhelmed with the fast pace environment and the way my colleague’s used four acronyms in every sentence! To then progressing to where I am now, loving the fast paced environment whilst building relationships with my colleagues and finally understanding them when they say sentences like ‘Is the T&L CPD at LWA’ (is the Teaching and Learning Continuing Professional Development at Leeds West Academy).
In the rest of my blog I would like to outline small aspects of what I have achieved and learnt over the past six weeks. Every day brings more opportunities to learn and of course a few challenges. I can really tell how much I have progressed when the things I found difficult to at the start (organising meetings, finding my way around the academies, knowing which staff member to email for certain jobs) has now become second nature.
As it is getting closer to Christmas, I have been tasked with organising various celebrations to commemorate the efforts of all staff over the past few months. This has involved liasing with restaurants to accommodate staff whilst ensuring the meal is correctly paid for.
A day that I particularly enjoyed was when I attended a Microsoft Training Event at Ribblesdale High School with the Business Managers, Teaching and Learning Vice Principals and students from each Academy. This day entailed a tour around the High School and a presentation to show us how they use their technology across the school and how we could implement the technology into our academies. The level of technology that the students used fascinated me and I particularly liked it when the Vice Principal of the school said -
'You wonder why students can often not focus within our lessons but that’s because technology has massively advanced outside of the classroom whilst teaching has stayed the same.’
I have also been involved with putting together Christmas Stockings for our Trust Student Leadership Group. In order to get together some lovely gifts, I contacted I the CEO’s of different companies to see if they would be able to generously donate some toiletries. I successfully managed to get an order from a company who supplied the TSLG with toiletries as well as providing us with many more toiletries to give to our students.
