humanutopia at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School

Running the Who Are You Course at QEGs

I think humanutopia is definitely been an eye opening experience it’s something I will remember.
We have the “Who are you” day first of all and it’s fair to say the we have never seen a single day have such impact on a year group as that.
It’s definitely made a big change in our year which I think was needed.
Today was really useful because it meant that I could tell people how I felt and it’s just made me feel a lot better about myself.

We got people standing up saying things about that I didn’t know and going up to people and saying sorry.
I was overwhelmed when it came to break time about how many students stood up, how many felt compelled to stand up to their peer groups and tell each other how they’ve been treated.

Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Students’ opinions

Very, very emotional.

It just brought us closer together as a unit.

It brings out another side in people.

After I spoke and I sat down I felt relieved.

They’re not being judged as you say, this is what the whole session is about.

All I needed to say was just out there.

My friend got up and talked about his racial abuse that he was getting.

Jack walked up to Caleb and just went up, gave him a hug.

When they hugged, I felt it really strong.

No one should be going through that by themselves.

It gave me a lot more confidence to speak in front of other people and one actually needed to know about everyone’s story.

I needed to tell someone about how I felt otherwise it wouldn’t get better.

They then came back and did some extension activities with Graham and they really started to plan their future and they actually have hopes and aspirations for the first time in their lives.

The extension solution was good because there was less people in it so we got a little more personal.

It’s made me realise that I thought I knew myself but there is a lot more I need to learn about myself.

It gave people a voice that didn’t manage to speak to speak out yesterday.

The humanutopia heroes training day has really showed me what we can do if we all work together.

I wanted to be a hero but I didn’t think I’d have the confidence I was surprised to see year 5s coming in. The walked in and they looked quite scared and then when they finally got to know us to know we weren’t as bad as we looked.

It makes you feel like you’ve done something you feel like you’ve achieved something.

I think the day has gone really good because people have got closer to people to that might have been mean to them.

Get to know more people that we don’t normally talk to, I think it’s really help a lot of people.

Now I feel like I can lead them through what I did because I want them to make a change to their year.

Amazing for the staff to see and I think trying to engage staff in the awareness of some of the challenges that young people face and these wonderful key things that we trying to drive forward.

Our year 11 students had GCSE English Language mock examination and one of the questions was to write about the most memorable influential day that you’ve spent in school life. And 30% of our students wrote about humanutopia and the impact it had on our lives.

I see the partnership going because I think it’s useful to start earlier, I like the way we’ve done it with the year 10 this year.
These opportunities here you can come and take these opportunities we will trust you, we will give you a chance because I think that’s what some students need to hear.

This experience has just been unreal.

Things will get better.

Everybody is happy.

I just hope that it carries on.

Hopefully the partnership will last other years to come between humanutopia and QEGs.