Bloomberg Reign Ended

The sun was shining for our annual ReachOut Cup football tournament last week. Teams from Bloomberg, UBS, Matthew Arnold and Baldwin, Barclays and Oliver Wyman battled it out on The Petchey Academy's brand new astroturf pitches for the much coveted ReachOut Cup trophy. 

Seven of our ReachOut Academy Year 9 boys volunteered their time to put together the event and help run it on the day.  They came in to the ReachOut offices during their Easter holiday, ordering trophies, cutting deals in local supermarkets, drawing up fixtures and sending emails to the team captains, and they all then volunteered a further three hours to run the event on the night – working as tournament stewards, ball boys, judges and trophy presenters.

This year the tournament changed to a 6-a-side format, and the new surface contributed to some excellent passing football on the day.  Despite beating Barclays comfortably in the group stages, Bloomberg were unable to secure a 5^th consecutive champions trophy, as Barclays turned on the style and upset the form book with an emphatic 3-1 win in the final. 

In the slightly confusing presentation that followed, Cavell Duque-Powell (aged 13) awarded CJ from Barclays the Top Goal Scorer award, which Cavell had decided was actually the Best Player Award – CJ was not the top scorer – and Julian from Bloomberg won the Sportsmanship Award.  We want to say a big thank you to everyone who took part, including the ReachOut mentees who volunteered to make the event happen and did a great job on the day. 

We raised a huge £5000 from the tournament, and everyone had a great time.  Look forward to seeing you again next year!

(If you are interested in entering a team for the Manchester ReachOut Cup on Friday 29^th May please contact Heidi.exell@reachoutuk.org)

Bloomberg

UBS

Oliver Wyman

Matthew Arnold and Baldwin

Winning team Barclays with our Year 9 boys

Ryan's tips for a Half Marathon

We asked personal trainer, Ryan, to share some tips for our runners preparing to do the Hackney Half on 10th May. Here are his top six tips for running a Half Marathon.

1. Stretch for 15 minutes after every run so you don’t get tight

2. Hydrate before and after you run

3. Make sure you have good quality, comfortable shoes to prevent blisters and injuries

4. Time yourself while you’re running to make sure you’re on track to meet your goal

5. Do at least an 8 mile run a week before the race – you don’t need to run the whole distance before the actual race

6. Have a good meal before the race but nothing too heavy, you don’t want to get a stitch. Make sure you eat at least 2 hours before the race.

Good luck guys!!

Ryan running the Hackney Half last year

ReachOut's day out at the Jubilee Centre

In the spring half term ReachOut was invited to attend a one day training course in Character Education with the Jubilee Centre in Birmingham.  Character Education has been the subject of increased interest in the UK recently, with more and more schools and other institutions incorporating it into their curricula.  The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues was established at the University of Birmingham in 2012 as a dedicated centre for the study and research of character and virtues. Their conviction is that character and virtue can be taught and that both have been largely neglected by the UK education system.  As a Junior Mentor Project Leader for ReachOut I was intrigued by the centre’s approach and traveled there with the London team, eager to learn about the philosophy behind their claims.

The centre's research and project aims are far reaching.  Introducing us to the centre, Tom Harrison talked about how recent events such as the riots in 2011, the MP's expenses scandal, and the actions of the banking industry prior to the recession, had sparked growing interest in morality in British media and academia.  The centre was set up partly in response to these events to investigate how education could be improved to foster a more virtuous society in the future.   Harrison’s doctorate focused on young people’s use of the internet and the centre is made up of 30 academics from different disciplines, from history to psychology, who research the nature of virtue and how it functions in the UK.  Their projects have included ‘An Attitude for Gratitude’ which focused on the virtue of giving thanks or the ‘Knightly Virtues’ project, which explored how virtues could be taught through storytelling.

The highlight of the day for me was our seminar with Kristjan Kristjansson, an Icelandic philosopher and a Professor of Character Education at the centre.   In a very short time he introduced us to a huge volume of ideas and new research on character education, exploring the history of the practice in the UK and US and the psychology and philosophy behind it.  Comparisons with America - where character education has had a long history - were frequent during the day and the Jubilee Centre’s academics were keen to distance themselves from the ‘instrumentalist’ character education developed by writers like Paul Tough in the 1980's.  The Jubilee Centre advocates an Aristotelian approach to character education, fostering moral values or virtues with an intrinsic goal of ‘being kind’ and ‘becoming’ virtuous rather than simply ‘acting’ in a virtuous way.  Since many people have misgivings about the nature of character education, it has been one of the centre’s missions to define their own practices and move away from the perception of character education as paternalistic, nostalgic and individualistic.  For more on this read Professor Kristjansson's article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2013.778386

The rest of the afternoon we spent in workshops, focusing on our own experiences and ideas about character education, which was a valuable opportunity for many of us to think more deeply about our own practice and the philosophies behind ReachOut’s work.  It was fascinating to hear from all the speakers and their work on character.  The work being done at the Jubilee centre is opening doors for educators to bring character and values to the forefront of education in Britain.  All the centre’s reports, including a full character education curriculum for 14-19 year olds can be freely downloaded here: http://jubileecentre.ac.uk/474/portal

The real challenge for the centre will be the opening of their own secondary school in September, at which their research is informing a curriculum where character education is woven into the entire school day.  The University of Birmingham School has created waves and is already highly oversubscribed, though they will be taking an equally experimental approach to pupil selection, eschewing a standard catchment area to select pupils from diverse backgrounds. We were fortunate to meet some of the new school’s teachers during the day and I look forward to hearing more about their work as the school begins accepting students. 

Rosa Kurowska

ReachOut Junior Mentor Project Leader