When I went on the first day at the launch, I was nervous. Within a couple of hours, it’s been the most inspirational, challenging, rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
We have learnt to gain more confidence, and to talk to different people that we haven’t really talked to before.
It makes sense. Everything that he says, we all understand and we’ve all felt that way. Today I wouldn’t have even stood up, and then I was standing up and speaking to like 50 people. And it makes you feel sort of nice being part of a really positive group.
I’m actually learning how to become a better manager, through listening and talking to these 14 year olds.
The beginning, I didn’t really know what I had to offer. I’ve gone through the program with the guys, and realising the sort of stuff I take for granted every day – what I do. The smallest things are the things that the students really need to know about to help them develop as people, and become more employable.
Being with someone who isn’t a teacher and who isn’t a parent. Talking to them as though they’re adults, I think is the biggest thing that they keep saying to us.
There’s a lot of students that walk in that aren’t confident. And even the ones that are confident – suddenly you realise that some of it’s a false confidence, and there’s more important things in life to worry about.
It’s helping me to develop – maybe a bit more empathy with the students at the age that they’re at.
The problems that they’ve all got are mainly about respect of teachers and with them. And I think, I think that’s the biggest thing. Going through the pecking order has made a lot of them realise where they are in the school, and they’re actually all the same. They’re all going through the same problems, and they’ve all got different things to bring to the table.
Even though I may feel low, nobody’s better than me. And I’m better than nobody.
It would be the change it’s making me feel – not at the top, but in the middle.
We are all equals in this world, really. And all we can do is try our best to be happy with how we are.
Been doing lots of different team work games, and I think they’ve been really good. Because everyone’s got more and more confident as we’ve gone on. I think it’s really helped for when we go up to secondary school. Like what to do, what not to do. So I have to make a good first impression to people.
The heroes are really nice, and we all get on really well. We’ve been talking about our problems and like how we can face them.
This has been a really exciting program to be involved in. I’ve not done anything like this before outside of the workplace. Today, I just saw a whole change in body language – from this morning to this afternoon. But some really drastic changes from the first day that we had 6 weeks ago. The next 2 years for them are about choices, are about giving them opportunities to do whatever they want to do as a job.
Be the Change has given me the skills to make me more employable, and it’s also given me some hope for the future.
Some of them are natural leaders, but they don’t realise it.
