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Monday
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Sunday
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Sunday
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Session One (Year 9) - Saturday 10th November 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 9:55PM 
A new year of ESIP beckons and this year we will have nearly sixty students.
Year Nine returned on Saturday 10th November 2012, an autumnal day in contrast to the 30 degree sunshine with which they started their Year 8 adventure.
Also returning was Michael Mallows with Crafty Listening Part 2.
After breakfast and catching up with what we had been doing over the Summer, Simon opened the day with a short talk about his experiences with the Royal Parks Half Marathon and how he applied the ESIP ABC (ability, belief and character) to help with his training and in the race itself. He finished in under two hours despite only ten weeks of training and being very sick on his first, very short run!
“I’ve understood that saying things just won’t make it happen. You have to plan it out and think what could come in your way.”
We created the very first ESIP Leader’s challenge. The idea is that Simon picks a challenge (something he is not good at) and applies the ESIP learning to his improvement. Simon told us how he had always been rubbish at drawing and wanted to get better so the Emerging Scholars have set a challenge for him to produce four drawings (a self portrait, a representation of aluminium foil showing light and shade, a 3D object and an abstract picture). To make this more challenging these drawings need to be submitted to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, displayed at the ESIP End of Year Event and posted on this website. Six ESIP students from Year 9 (Munsifa, Ilana, Sineka, Kriselle, Amber and Heather) will also act as the judging and feedback panel.
Crafty Listening Part 2 opened with three things the girls remembered from Michael’s previous session in May 2012, what they had put into practice and with what noticeable effects. Common responses were the drama triangle (and stopping being a rescuer) and the relationship between self and environment (thinking about our actions and why we do things and the impact our actions have).
We played the desert survival game – the scenario is based on a plane crash where you land with some key items and have to prioritise them and explain their use. The girls worked well in groups, not always getting the right answers but being challenged in their thinking and negotiation skills. A number of students have developed much better articulation and confidence in argument compared to last year. One student got very assertive!
“I contributed a lot during group work and this made the atmosphere in my group warmer and more comfortable. Also talking about my future with others has made me think more about what will happen in my future and made me start thinking about having a plan B in life.”
Next was the ‘well formed outcomes exercise’ with girls in groups of three taking the role of facilitator (asking the questions), explorer (answering the questions) and observer (keeping facilitator and explorer on track). All the Emerging Scholars had an opportunity in all three roles for the topic of ‘having a great career’. We then added the ‘clean questions’ element to clarify thinking and help the girls move from ‘to do’ towards ‘to be’. As a follow up to the responses we were able to think more about how people can sabotage themselves and the importance of having a back up plan.
“I have learnt how to philosophise and inspect every angle of a sentence and find a question that can squeeze more information out of a person. I have the ability to make them think deeper, harder and longer.”
“I will think about how my actions could result in sabotaging my future. For example, I don’t concentrate in my Italian classes so I don’t learn it fluently therefore I can’t move to Italy whenever I want.”
Michael covered the logical levels again (environment, behaviour, capabilities, beliefs and values, identity, relationship with self and others and finally spirit) and the girls debated their perspectives on Oxbridge education. The debate produced some very mature perspectives as they see the value of different universities and different types of education and career depending on what they want to do and achieve. The session ended with a review of the four levels of competence (unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence). At the end of the day our brains were starting to hurt from all the thinking!
“I’m now more aware about my resilience and now I’ve realised that I seem to give up quite often. This has made a difference to me so now I will keep in mind to always be positive and to keep the levels of competence in mind.”
“The girls value small group sizes and the tutorial groups of five as being like an Oxbridge education.” - Mentor
See more pictures from the day in our Gallery.
Friday
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Friday
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End of Year Showcase - Saturday 7th July 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012 at 12:44PM The Emerging Scholars of 2011/12 met up early on Saturday morning to put the finishing touches to the first End of Year Showcase event. After a morning of preparations we were ready to go.
Over 100 people attended to see the students deliver debates and talk about their thoughts and experiences of the programme so far. The exhibition was popular and offered guests the opportunity to try out some of the activitie, from problem solving and code breaking to science and artistic interpretation.
All 30 students were presented with their Emerging Scholars Year One certificates and a special ESIP Forest goody bag. The award for Emerging Scholar of the Year was presented by Penny Goodman, Headmistress of Forest Girls School to Munsifa Ashraf Hussain.
We would like to thank all the students, mentors and staff involved in the very successful event and look forward to welcoming everyone back next term.
