Toni has been on work experience this week and so has written the guest blog
My week at Yew Tree for work experience has been far from what I expected! I knew that, during the day, Yew Tree was involved in visiting quite a few schools and doing drama workshops with them, but that was about it. I never realised the mass variety of things Yew Tree does. With an interest in how drama could be applied to work and everyday life, I was really looking forward to shadowing Sarah.
The very first thing I did on Monday morning was unexpected. On my timetable, it was down as customer service training, and I was slightly confused but nevertheless, I turned up. When I got there Sarah was in a room that was about to be filled with 20 or so adults about to take a customer service course and I was rather curious about what Yew Tree had to do with it. I watched at the side as the course took place and listened in to groups when they were given an exercise, which was pretty interesting in itself to look into another career path. Then we watched a role play situation performed fabulously by Gemma and Trev which really helped the people on the course as they analysed it. So by 12 O'Clock on my first day, I had already learned something entirely unexpected about how drama can be applied to work and it was great!
We did, as I expected, visit a few primary schools. The age group that Sarah has been working with is year 4s and the workshops she had been doing were themed to help them with the topics of their writing, in class. Even something as simple as this really impressed me. You can bring things out of young children by doing drama workshops with them such as confidence and imagination but whilst doing those, Sarah has also been helping them discover interesting story lines and vocabulary for their school work. One school we visited were studying Brazil due to the World Cup. The task they were given was to be a travel agent and persuade people to go to Brazil by describing the tourist attractions there. They had about 20 minutes and I tried to work my way round most of the groups and offer them help, not many of them needed it but they enjoyed showing someone what they'd done. Their knowledge was quite impressive and so were the plays they came up with (even with the odd off subject topic about how many puppies you were allowed in the hotel).
Other things I took part in included a learning workshop at the Hepworth and the fabulous Orange company, Jade company (where I lead my first games! Which were great fun and less daunting than expected); then the drama group at WYTDC who were being introduced to their next show, Alice in Wonderland. With all of this, there was less time at the office than planned on my original timetable.
It's at this point that it's worth mentioning how much I've enjoyed this week, the variety of people that Sarah and all of Yew Tree help, from adults to year 4s, not to mention the whole of the Youth Theatre. Also, it was Sarah's birthday on Wednesday, Happy Birthday Sarah! And finally, I couldn't go without mentioning, how astounded I was at the amount of names Sarah knows and remembers! That in itself takes skill!
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