In the interests of teenagers …

In the last week I have been at a few different events aimed at students to teach them things in different ways. The enthusiasm and involvement of the students varied greatly and the level of success seems to be measured by this.

One of the events had some great practical activities, group work, and real world applications. The students were able to be creative, messy and got clear rewards. Strangely enough this seemed to be the least successful of the activities. Despite the activities there was a lot of time waiting for feedback and in these times there plenty of opportunity to get distracted. It felt like the structure of the feedback times and the delivery of the talks is where this event fell down.

At another event I was at last week, a group of students were given a tour of Westminster Cathedral. The tour lasted an hour and half and was about architecture and the religious significance artefacts. After the tour was over the students were keen to explore and stay for longer. I had to work hard to convince them to go lunch. The key seemed to be the person leading the tour and the pace of the tour which was lots of short stops. The tour was led by a wonderful lady volunteer called Dora. She spoke at their level but was still challenging with questions. She seemed to have a genuine love for what she was doing – they were rapt for the full course of her talk.

The final event I was at was a talk to a group of students by a teacher. It lasted for 30 minutes with only a few visuals. The students were silent for the whole talk and were perfectly still. At the end they gave a genuine extended round of applause. This time the key seemed to be honesty and passion. The teacher was talking about personal experience and events – the students seemed honoured to hear what had happened and were respectful of everything the teacher said.

The message seems to be to keep the interests of teenagers you need to:

• plan carefully and structure things well
• keep the pace up
• be passionate and full of meaning
• be honest and care
• challenge them