By Jamie Dungavell, Home School Partnership Officer, Coatbridge High School and Alanah, S6 MVP mentor
“this programme has supported the Community Learning and Development (CLD) priorities of empowering young people to be heard within the school while building upon their social capital and wider experiences and achievements”
“It is a good feeling to be there for them to open up to and trust”
As the Home School Partnership Office (HSPO) in Coatbridge High School part of my role is to support the recruitment, training and delivery of the MVP programme while also promoting its overall ethos within the school. Over the years this programme has supported the CLD priorities of empowering young people to be heard within the school while building upon their social capital and wider experiences & achievements.
In the most recent year of delivery, a number of our young people expressed enthusiasm for doing more in relation to promoting the MVP message in Coatbridge. In looking to share the impact that MVP has, I extended a hand of partnership out to other high schools in the area and Portland high school responded asking if there was any way in which the two schools could work together. Portland High School offers day support, as part of the spectrum of special educational provision within North Lanarkshire, to young people who are experiencing social, emotional and behavioural problems. Through some initial discussions with their HSPO, the plan was to challenge some of the negative stereotyping and behaviours that often come from the hardest to reach pupils within schools like Portland. Many of the boys and girls at this school engaged in a variety of anti-social and negative behaviours that we were looking to challenge.
After discussing the idea with the Coatbridge High MVP mentors, a plan was formed that trained leaders from the school would come to Portland and deliver the core sessions to their pupils. Initially the young people were a bit apprehensive as they knew of the challenging nature of the pupils in Portland. To address this concern, I came up with additional training for the volunteers to take part in. This training focused on understanding the life circumstances that these boys and girls came from while also providing them extra facilitation techniques. I also focused on supporting them feel more confident in their own skills and helped them highlight the range of skills and qualities they had for the task ahead.
In the lead up to the initial deliveries in the school I helped our delivery group prepare for any difficult circumstances they might encounter. Although they were apprehensive initially, they were now in a more confident frame of mind in regards to the message they were trying to get across, alongside the experience they had under their belt. When they began their delivery it was clear they would have some of the core views of MVP challenged right away from gender based roles to what language and behaviour is acceptable to view as a bystander. Using all their experience and training the leaders remained robust in their approach and stayed true to the message of MVP, often having difficult debates with the Portland young people taking part. I could see as they had these discussions that some of the MVP views were being taken on board by the Portland young people. You could see an impact being made as the discussion taking place was between young people instead of staff and pupils.
The sessions were ultimately very successful with everyone taking part fully. These core sessions around empathy, types of violence and gender stereotyping seemed to set up a brilliant foundation for discourse between all the young people involved.
I believe this whole process was a success and the young people who delivered got a lot out of it. It was also clear that the Portland pupils had their views challenged in a way that they had never experienced. I believe that going forward, a team that could consistently deliver to these young people would develop a strong working relationship with them. It would mean that the dialogue and views that are shared would be very transparent and real. Ultimately this would allow those involved, who often come from the most difficult and challenging life circumstances, to begin to change their views and question some of the behaviours they participate in or see every single day.
Jamie Dungavell, HSPO, Coatbridge High School
My experience of delivering MVP to Portland High School was extremely positive and gave me the opportunity to talk to vulnerable teenagers my age on sensitive and important topics which affect us every day in society. Talking to the pupils and getting to know them better whilst doing these topics gave me the opportunity to understand how they feel about the topics and how it affects them. It helped some of the pupils open up to us and tell us their own experience at home, which was hard to hear as they are the same age as me and had been through so much. It is a good feeling to be there for them to open up to and trust, as by them opening up about their stories and things they’ve seen happen, it helped them build trust with us and help them when experiencing a difficult time, no matter the situation. While delivering the MVP lesson the pupils engaged in every activity enthusiastically. As well as them telling their own experiences, I share my own, which caused the pupils to realise that they can talk to us and we have all been through situations but opening up about them makes us strong. If they don’t feel comfortable opening up to staff and asking them questions, they could come to us and ask, as if they are close in age to us and we can relate to the feelings they may feel.
Alanah, S6 Mentor, Coatbridge High
