Month: January 2022

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is marked each year on 27th January – the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this day, schools, communities and faith groups across the UK join together in national and local events to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and of even more recent genocides. 

Deacon Javier, our Lay Chaplin, lead a Holocaust Memorial service at each site which staff and students attended.  The service was extremely moving and highlighted the Nazi Persecution and the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, in the hope that there may be One Day in the future with no genocide. 

We were privileged enough to host a talk with two holocaust survivors, Paul Sved and Ivan Shaw, who both have fascinating stories about their experiences as young children living in cities under Nazi control. Both speakers, now in their 80’s, gave up their time to speak to CTK lower sixth students as part of the Sixth Forms 10:10 programme. Their stories were extremely moving and highlighted the sadness in their childhood and their victimisation of Nazi persecution. The pair went on to give a recap of their oppression, the time spent away from their families as young children, the day they finally managed to escape Nazi occupation and how they remarkably went on to lead normal happy lives. 

Our students were fascinated by their stories and amazed by the bravery of the survivors. One student said “The testimonies gave me a very harsh yet interesting insight into life during the Holocaust. We’ve heard from historians but not often the survivors and it allowed me to understand the atrocities that were taken upon the people of that time and helped me understand the misfortune they went through. Even with all his discomfort he prevailed and taught a valuable lesson on how two very different views can affect the whole of human history.” – Kanye Cross-Gordon, CTK St Mary’s student. 

We would like to say a big thank you to the Holocaust Educational Trust for arranging this session with us and to the incredible guest speakers for sharing their memorable stories with us at this time.

We were delighted to host Unloc’s insightful Alternative Pathways Session which focused on understanding career options as well as apprenticeships and traineeships. Unloc are an educational organisation that aim to develop the potential of young people.  

The educational event spanned over two hours, beginning with an introduction of the facilitators and the objective for the event, which was to inform learners about the alternative avenues for them to progress after studying at CTK. Students were then encouraged to participate in a Q&A segment led by Colin Yaoshioka-Smith (Training Academy) which looked specifically at Apprenticeships and Traineeships. 

The session then moved on to a talk by Mo Hussain (Best Practice People) who explained the apprentice hiring process in certain sectors. This was then followed by Alan Hunte’s (Thoth London) segment on the future of employment. Finally, lead facilitator Stacey Bawden then finished the presentation by talking to the students about other, equally important factors in career exploration such as personal SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) analysis and goal setting. 

The learners found the Alternative Pathways Session highly informative and educational, and we are incredibly happy that we can continue to provide such fantastic sessions to our learners in order to further prepare them for the future. 

We would like to say a special thanks to Unloc and Stacey Bawden for facilitating the session and to our Careers department, for seeking out and working with these educational organisations to further enrich our students with quality careers information and advice.

The work of our CTK Eco Group continues to go from strength to strength. The Eco committee meet regularly to take forward the Sixth Form’s Green agenda. In a recent meeting they discussed changes they could make to reduce our impact on the environment. Recently, the group have been looking at the impact of meat farming and the damage that such heavily laboured factories can do to the environment. 

The outcome of these meetings has inspired students to consider eating alternative foods that have little-to-no impact on the environment, as it helps reduce the impact too much meat consumption has on both the human body and the environment. 

The reps launched a competition across the three CTK sites, which looked at identifying meat free dishes that each site wanted to take forward. Entrants had to plan a recipe for their tastiest meat-free dish which would be cooked in the canteen. We await to hear the outcome, but recipes included: vegetarian Pizza, meat free chilly, cauliflower curry along with Quorn based alternatives to traditional meat-based recipes. 

The sixth form also received a visit from the Education and Engagement Officer for the Big City Butterfly Project. This is an exciting new project that aims to inspire Londoners to discover butterflies and moths, and connect them with nature and their local green spaces. As well as offering habitat management advice, they have also offered to run a butterfly ID workshop for staff and students. This is an opportunity to gain skills and knowledge to help increase butterfly monitoring across the project area.