A healthy dose of ideas...

For the past couple of months we’ve been helping pupils at a north east secondary school set up and run a smoothie bar. We’ve been running sessions with them which have covered, amongst other things, creative ways to conduct market research (ideas ranged from a water tank whose level increased with ‘yes’ votes to a human chalk board), how to develop an attractive product and how to go about showing this off and getting people interested. Whilst some pupils used the sessions as an outlet to express their adoration for particular celebrities (“Can we hire Beyonce to sing about it?!”), others showed genuine entrepreneurial spirit.

As the day of the grand opening fast approaches we are thinking customer relations issues – is the customer always right? And how is crowd control managed if 50 Year 7s simultaneously decide they need to quench their thirst with a delicious blended fruit surprise?

Whilst it is meant to be the old teaching the young, we have definitely learnt a thing or two and continue to be impressed by the ideas these pupils continue to generate. Something special happens when a person who is thoroughly convinced of their idea is helped up onto the soapbox and feels supported enough to tell the world. Our aim this month is to facilitate more of these soap box moments.

Windy days

Who would have thought it... windy weather = mentalist kids! At one of the schools we were at last week the class were about as focused and attentive as my Gran’s cats (which aren't focused or attentive AT ALL). We thought we were rubbish, we even shed a mini tear but to our shock the teacher said "yeah, it's windy outside - this happens everytime". Erm? What? Did we hear this correctly? Windy weather = mentalist kids? We thought this was a theory worth testing so bought 15 hair dryers and set up an experiment... well, not quite, but we phoned some other teachers to double check and had the theory validated.Interesting.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is something well documented and many forward thinking employers display emotional intelligence with their employees to get a great working atmosphere. Basically, rather than being tight with attendance fixed to particular times, they allow greater flexibility asking people to work when the business needs it but remembering to consider the individuals needs as well. Not exactly rocket science. At the same time we're expecting teacher's lesson plans to be laid out in advance and flexibility, originality and improvisation are boxed up and shipped to far far away.

Please sir, can we play games outdoors when it's windy and make use of increased energy levels and decreased attention spans rather than fighting to maintain discipline? Or even just learn with more flexibility linked to the outdoors, our moods and what's happening in the world around us.Probably.