7th November

One of the most gratifying parts of my job is working with teachers. We ( Sandra and Kathryn and I) hold training sessions, usually for tutors or teachers with a responsibility for pastoral care or for Personal Social and Health Education. We also train subject teachers who are expected to be able to talk to their pupils knowledgeably about alcohol, drugs, bullying, esafety and many other PSHE subjects. You can imagine what a big ask this is, on top of normal lesson preparation for their subjects and other school responsibilities.

So today was a familiarisations session for a group of non specialist PSHE teachers, many of whom are new to the job. Part of the session is about making sure teachers are confident about what units are and the laws around alcohol especially concerning those under 18. We then deal with how important it is to use the talkabout alcohol programme in Years 8 and 9 before pupils come across alcohol in social situations – first responses from teachers are often that their role is to keep pupils safe around alcohol as they’re going to drink anyway, but what we are able to show is that if you use games and role play and engaging lesson plans you build up young people’s resilience skills and informed decision making that helps delay the age they start drinking. Most kids in these years presume that most of the year 10’s and 11’s are off partying and drinking – and infact they’re not! Finally, after going through lesson plans and film clips we talk about the importance of encouraging parents to talk about alcohol as they are the key suppliers (70%) of alcohol to those under 18 and need support in developing ‘tough love’ strategies in knowing where there kids are and who they are with, being good role models and setting boundaries – all our staff have kids and so understand the parental side of things as well as any parent.

So after a long day, we went round to friends for supper – and if my kids had allowed me my 4 days off, this evening would have been one of them as I was the only one not drinking, so arm twisting for them to sponsor me instead! My husband, Tim and Andy have been friends since they were 13 and guess who got to drive home again? Drink of the evening? Ginger beer yum!!