The Friday Mindset - Issue #27

October 08, 2021

Yesterday, one of us was walking down a school corridor towards some sliding glass doors. Seeing another figure alongside us, we stopped to let them go first, signalling for them to do so.

It turned out it was our own reflection. We were politely waiting... for our own reflection to pass us. That's how tiring this term has been so far.

Anyway, it's Friday! Your reflection may have already left the building - ours certainly has - but you're still here, burning the 3:45pm oil. Good for you. Break the seal on a fresh decaf coffee, steal a pair of underwhelming biscuits from the training room and put your feet up.

Something to try...

A great Vision activity with A level students is to encourage the idea of the informational interview. This is a concept borrowed from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans' book Designing Your Life, one of the best books on vision we've read (we recommended it back in newsletter 4).

In it, Burnett and Evans argue that because of the hyper-connectivity of the world we live in, traditional ways of finding work - responding to job adverts - are falling out of fashion. Vast numbers of jobs (or internships) are never advertised, they say. Instead, future employees, interns or volunteers are found on LinkedIn, or because of an interaction on social media, or because 'a friend knows someone.'

It's something we've seen in the freelance parts of our working lives; work arrives because someone told someone who told someone... who got in touch with us to find out more.

Burnett and Evans make a good case for meeting with people doing the kind of work you'd like to do, and interviewing them. Just spending an hour asking them about their working lives; being genuinely curious about what their work is like. You get remembered, they say. And then, the next time an opportunity comes up, the chance might fall to you. It's not a way forward for every student, but it might open a world of possibilities for some. Here's a short clip to use if you'd like to introduce the idea:

If you'd like a little more, we have a short five-slide powerpoint to share, including an email outline for students to use so they can confidently get in touch with a professional. Say hello at [email protected] if you'd like a copy!

Something we've been reading...

Practice geeks - this image might catch your eye. It's the work of Dr Sarah Lerchenfeldt, a Biomedical Scientist at Oakland University, and it's the results of her findings regarding the practice behaviours of second year medical students:

Lerchenfeldt looked at Dunlosky's research to see if similar impacts were found in her medical students. Her findings?

  • 51% of undergrad medics' time was spent on low utility revision tasks

  • The techniques Dunlosky found had low utility were confirmed as being low utility in this study...

  • ...except Lerchenfeldt found a more positive correlation with image use than Dunlosky did.

By the way - many thanks to everyone who came along to our free twilight this Wednesday night just gone. The focus was entirely on practice. Thanks for all the positive feedback! We had to cut this from the presentation so we didn't go on too long, but it's certainly worth a read. The full paper is here:

We might run the above session again if there's interest?

Please let us know by saying hello at [email protected]. If there's the right sort of number, we'll run it a second time.

Our latest offer...

We're delighted to let you know we're running a training day in central London on December 14th. We love these days; we cover the model (with new activities as well as some old favourites as examples) we look at coaching students (with new material here too) and we cover implementation (including successful approaches we've seen in schools across the UK and abroad.)

It's an exciting one for us, particularly after two years in which it's been very hard to run face-to-face training in a room together. There's nothing quite like the connections, ideas and possibilities that arise when fellow professionals get together and leave behind the whirlwind of the day job.

We'll be advertising the session on Twitter soon enough, but we wanted to give newsletter readers the opportunity to book their places first.

And here's another thing: we wanted you all to get the chance to shape the day. If there's anything you'd like us to cover or anything you need clarification on... let us know, and if there's a theme emerging that needs addressing, we'll make sure it's on the plan for December 14th. (Of course there'll be time for questions too, so you'll get the chance to unpick any issues you might have.)

Here's the Eventbrite link:

Eventbrite - Steve Oakes & Martin Griffin presents VESPA - Full Day (London Course) - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at Union Jack Club, London, England. Find event and ticket information.

And that's it for now. It's time to pack up your bag for the last time, scoop up the armful of marking we all know you're not going to find time to do, and head out to the car to listen to Bon Jovi on the ringroad.

Have a great weekend,

Steve and Martin

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