Tanbridge House becomes ‘School of Dreams’ after recent workshop

The workshop was supported by Gatwick Honda, and staff from the company also participated in the workshop along with the students and teachers.

Pupils from Southwater Junior Academy, Castlewood Primary School, St Mary’s Primary School and Shelley Primary School also attended the workshop, giving children the chance to get to know peers from other schools and their teachers of the future.

The School of Dreams programme helps young people to understand the importance of pursuing their dreams, and taught skills and strategies to help turn their dreams into reality. It was developed by Honda (UK) and a team of independent education experts as part of Honda’s commitment to giving back to the local communities in which it operates. School of Dreams helps students and educators discover different, creative and fun ways to learn.

Over the last seven years, School of Dreams has been delivered in more than 200 schools across the UK, directly engaging around 10,000 students and educators.

Additionally, the programme has been designed to create an on-going legacy beyond each workshop. Students are encouraged to become ‘Sharers’ and ‘Doers’, by both taking what they have learnt and cascading it to others, and by organising team projects which aim to change something in their local community for the better.

The programme runs an awards scheme which recognises this sharing and doing, as well as offering financial assistance and a range of support materials.

In many cases local Honda representatives have become ‘Mentors’, helping teams of students to turn their legacy projects into reality. It is estimated that to date more than 30,000 further students and educators have benefitted from the cascade programme.

The School of Dreams has been carefully mapped against the National Curriculum’s Personal Learning and Thinking Skills framework. Over the course of the two days pupils experienced all ten of the learning strategies identified in the ‘Leading in Learning’ education initiative.

Special care was taken to ensure that all material from Honda was directly relevant to teaching objectives and the framework enables students and educators to cascade the programme once they have taken part.

The workshop was challenging but great fun. Teachers and pupils worked at the same level in small groups and learnt how to turn their dreams into reality by using real-life examples of people who have achieved their dreams, as well as developing new skills such as juggling.

Steve Peters, Business Manager at Gatwick Honda, said: “To help children understand they can turn their dreams into reality by learning to use strategies in their early lives will undoubtedly have a positive effect on the local community. We believe children and young adults deserve all the help they can get. ….. And it was a fun, interactive way to learn.”

Sally Linsell, Marketing and Development Manager at Tanbridge House School, added: “Our students and staff really enjoyed the programme and it was great to work with pupils from some of our local primary schools. The Honda team inspired our students chase their dreams.”

For more information please visit www.schoolofdreams.co.uk.

Report and picture contributed.