Last night we had a Free Rangers Team Building event which left us all feeling proud and lucky to be part of a great bunch of staff. With the pizza oven fired up and the early evening sunshine gently glowing through the trees the evening was full of promise. Tim started us off with some fun ice breaking questions; “What was your favourite TV programme when you were a child and what is your favourite film.” Let’s just say that we now see our esteemed catering Manager Valerie in a new light when she declared the Aliens trilogy as amongst her favourites. You learn something new everydayJ
With people happily chatting Gemma steered the conversation into giving everyone the opportunity to share their most recent achievement and moving forwards where they want to progress. These varied hugely from professional and personal with everyone applauding and celebrating people’s recent success and listening avidly to future ideas and projects.
Other nursery business was discussed and then we broke for delicious pizzas and salads and more insightful chats.
Following on from this we discussed how we want to support new staff and concentrate on our continuing provision for those staff that have now been with us since Free Rangers opened its doors in August 2011.
Such is the busy nature of Free Rangers and indeed any educational establishment that the opportunities to sit and discuss Continued Professional Development are few and far between, hence the birth of the Practitioner Wheel. Charlotte carefully compiled the wheel having read copious amounts of Ofsted and Local Authority documentation. It is split into four sections: Learning and Development, Unique Child, Positive Relationships and Enabling Environments. It is a platform from which staff can highlight their strengths and sing from the roof tops about all the amazing things that they do. It will also give us the opportunity as individuals to identify areas that need development. We will all be responsible for our own Wheel and the more we put into this process the more we will get out. An exciting tool for us all to be getting to grips with.
In all these chats about future developments the Red Fox could be seen darting here, there and everyone carting tarps, kindling, rope and firewood out in the paddock with a cheeky grin on his face. Just what did he have in store for us all……? A task in which everyone would show their true colours so it turned out!
We were split into three groups which were made up of people that we do not often work with. Each of the three groups were informed that they were deserted on an island and to survive the island they must build a shelter, light a fire and cook a marshmallow. Not such a tricky task I hear you say, think again as each of the groups were lacking in a key piece of kit to enable them to conquer their task. One could only imagine the misdemeanours and skulduggery that ensued. I overheard a conversation from the “winning” team as they sat contentedly around their fire pit relishing their marshmallows that two of their members did what the Den staff always do, they took stuff from other people……. Well it is resourceful I suppose!
Much merriment and fun was had by all but a serious message ran throughout. Teamwork and communication are key to successful relationships, something we think we are pretty good at here at Free Rangers.
As ever thanks to Gemma for organising the evening, thanks to Ed for planning such a thoughtful and insightful task and for all the Free Rangers team for making it such a success.
Jayne