The past few months have proved to be a challenge for many of us, we have received some truly inspiring stories from staff and students that have filled us with pride during these unprecedented times .
Year 12 student, Eoin, bravely volunteered to spend the first week of his Easter holidays at his Uncle’s Residential Care Home in Birmingham, the home was desperately short of staff and couldn’t look after all the residents due to staff sickness. Many of the residents were also experiencing symptoms of Covid 19. Eoin took it upon himself to go to the home and help out whilst both of his parents continued to work hard for the NHS.
Sehyr, also Year 12, has been selflessly giving up her own time to shop for other residents in her neighbourhood, cycling to her local supermarket to collect and deliver groceries. Many food banks are in very high demand at the moment and Sehyr and her brother, Adnan, have also been collecting food donations to deliver to local food banks whilst their parents continue to work incredibly hard for the NHS.
Dean, Year 9, spent his Easter break with his dad, helping to extend a small local bakery so that they could safely practice social distancing whilst still providing food and support for the local community.
Year 12 student, Arpan, has taken up the challenge of cycling 500km to raise money for NHS workers and volunteers. Arpan has already exceeded his target and continues to work hard to raise as much money as possible for this charity. If you would like to track Arpan’s progress you can follow his twitter page here.
Our staff members, have also been using their time to support the high demand for PPE. Mrs Holloway, Director of Outdoor Studies, has been volunteering from home with the Nottinghamshire “For the Love of Scrubs” home sewing group, who are making laundry bags, scrubs, scrub caps and ear savers for those who are wearing masks every day. Her laundry bags were very gratefully received by the community midwifery team.
If any front line parents would like to request for themselves or colleagues: laundry bags, ear savers or scrubs from the Nottinghamshire “For the Love of Scrubs” group please email any requests to ftlosnottinghamshire@gmail.com – If any students or parents at home would like to join in with the sewing of laundry bags or crocheting of ear savers this is the link to the Facebook group with all the information they’ll need to get started, and to organise pickups/drop-offs at localised hubs for finished articles. This would also count as a #DofEWithADifference volunteering activity for any students in Y9, 10 or 12, and Mrs Holloway could be your assessor, just keep a diary and upload photos of your makes to your DofE account each week.
Similar to this, our D&T department have also been working incredibly hard from home. With help of one of the School’s old 3D printers they have printed over 100 ‘ear savers’ and they’ve been distributed to paramedics, QMC and various local care homes. Mr Charlwood has also been working with BBC to create resources for the new D&T BBC Bitesize lessons to support home learning.
We are so proud and inspired by all of these acts of kindness both in and out of School and we can’t wait to hear more about these experiences when we can welcome all students back to School.
