Screen Idol Corporate Social Responsibility
Screen Idol's commitment to supporting our local community took an educational turn this year! We've been working with the Sixth Form at Heathfield School in Pinner to prepare for their Leadership Challenge Week, during which a team of six students takes charge of running the entire school for a day. All is revealed in the School's official press release below:
There's a lot more to running a school than just lesson plans, as Heathfield School's Year 12 students are finding out this year. The School's annual Leadership Challenge Week takes a new and uncharted direction on Thursday 2 July, when Year 12 assumes complete responsibility for running the school, for one day only.
Dubbed 'One Special Day', with its own logo designed by the girls, this event has been planned and organised over many months by a six-strong volunteer 'leadership team', with guidance and support from school staff and coaching and mentoring from local leadership and marketing experts, Screen Idol Ltd.
Leading the One Special Day leadership team is Kejal Patel, who explains that they were offered a completely free hand to propose the structure and timetable for the day – as long as they kept within legal and regulatory boundaries. As Kejal says, "This initial planning and decision-making phase meant that we learned an enormous amount about what is actually involved in the business of running our school!"
After brainstorming, assessing and eventually ruling out a number of options, some more outlandish and potentially risky than others, the leadership team have arranged that One Special Day will be a blend of lessons and team-building activities, with a special themed menu for lunch and a few surprises along the way... before culminating in a special Assembly at the end of the day where they will formally hand the school back to the Head, Miss Christine Juett.
Nivethitha Srivasan says "The first three lessons will be conducted by Year 12, after which the school will be split into vertical groups with team leaders and undertake activities that will require team work. Members of staff will need to be present to assess Year 12 and in order to comply with health and safety requirements, and then a feedback session will take place the day afterwards between staff and students to review what we learned from the whole exercise." Leading the lessons with assistance from the teachers is also giving the girls the opportunity to learn about lesson planning and delivery.
Since January, the students have had leadership and business training, coaching, mentoring and support from Sharon Pink and Peter Oliver, the leadership experts at Screen Idol Ltd, the proposals and marketing company also based in Pinner. Sharon and Peter are providing all their services to Leadership Challenge Week free of charge as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility activities supporting the local community and helping to develop the leaders of the future. The School very much appreciates their assistance. Mrs Linda Estruch, Head of Upper School said "Through collaboration with Heathfield School, Screen Idol Ltd has provided insight and a business perspective on developing Leadership Challenge Week. We very much appreciate all the advice they have given in this project. Throughout the year the focus has been on developing strong leadership skills and teamwork in planning this venture. Our students realise how challenging and exciting it is to have complete freedom in running the school for the day in whichever way they chose - from lessons to the lunchtime menu!"
The weekly planning sessions led by Screen Idol have been key to helping the One Special Day volunteers come together and work as a team and understand the importance of planning and organisation, budgeting, delegation, compliance issues, communication with staff and the rest of their year - and that leadership can be stressful but enjoyable as well as a major learning experience!
As Gursimen Kaur says, "Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. The aim of One Special Day is to make us all aware of what leadership is and for the Year 12s to learn how to lead a school for the day. This has never been done before and we are lucky to be the first group to experience this."