In the school holidays, Dave Strong, our Botany Gardens Manager and an environmental expert, helped by Year 10 girls, showed Turney Special School children from Years 8 and 9 what they could discover from pond-dipping. The Turney School boys loved the whirligig beetles and were even more enthusiastic about the ugly-looking dragonfly nymphs. Since then their teacher says they are constantly asking when they can come back!

Looking back....

Each year, Senior JAGS girls give up a week of their summer holiday to be classroom assistants at this local school for primary and secondary children with emotional and behavioural special needs.

My experience of helping at Turney School this summer was unique and memorable. A few of my friends had gone to Turney for a week the summer before and afterwards they were extremely enthusiastic about the experience and working with the all the children.

Nevertheless, while I knew I would definitely benefit from the experience at Turney, I was still unsure as to exactly what the week would bring.

Being the last week of term, their schedule was irregular so upon arriving the first day, I was immediately thrown right into the action as along with the other JAGS girls I joined a group heading to see Ice Age 3 in 3D. During the journey the friendly excitement of the children was infectious and was the teamwork that the teachers and teaching assistants used to manage taking them to the cinema remarkable.

Throughout the week this was something that continued to strike me as something particularly special about Turney: the way the teachers, teaching assistants and pupils work together to help each other as this gave me an intense sense of their special community. The celebrations at the two End of Term assemblies highlighted this especially as everyone joined in their favourite songs or applauded a successful leaver or soloist. But so too did moments in the classroom, for example one of the boys in my class was scared of rain and once it started raining the way the rest of the class banded together to distract him, to cheer him and to stop him from crying was one of my most memorable moments.

I was in Gold Class which is a class made up of children of different ages who are among the most able in Turney and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them that week. Because all the children are so individual no two people will have the same experience at Turney, each person will have their own favourite memories, their own personal breakthroughs with the children and that is part of what adds the unique appeal and satisfaction of helping there for a week in the summer.

Hayley Flood, Year 12

My week at Turney Special School was one of the most enlightening of my life. I spent most of the first day feeling entirely at sea and completely unsure of how I was meant to interact with the children. I was in the reception class which had 9 non-verbal children and just 1 verbal. However, as the week went on I began to understand how to communicate with them, with few words and simple gestures. The most wonderful moment was when one boy in the class chose to come and sit on my lap which, for a child who had previously been completely unresponsive to me, was a huge breakthrough. I have such admiration for the teachers that I worked with because I visited in the last week of term and so it was fetes and playtime galore and yet I was absolutely exhausted each day. One of the teachers said, when I asked why she became involved in special needs teaching, that she wanted to help make these children understood and get the attention that they otherwise might not. This is why it is so important for schools like Turney to keep going and why I would love to do my bit by taking part again next year.

Beatrice Graham, Year 12