The P Factor
On January 8th 2000, I opened my first Perform class. Me, a teacher and four children.
It went pretty well – all things considered. But, afterwards, when I was talking to the parents about my plans to eventually open Perform all over London, one of the mums said that my greatest challenge would be finding great people to run the classes. People who would do an amazing job every week whether you are there or not.
11 years,180 teachers and 4,000 children a week later, I agree!
The biggest challenge and the most time-consuming element of my job is recruiting. And that’s simply because it’s not just important – it’s the most important thing. Having fantastic teachers is the only way we can guarantee the standards of our classes.
Perform teachers have to be “triple threats”. For anyone that’s not familiar with the musical theatre term, that means able to act, sing and dance. They must be brilliant with children, totally professional, have staggering energy…and like getting up at 6am on Saturday mornings.
What Do You Want to Be?
Today I was chatting with my son about the various jobs which grown ups do – so of course I just had to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up. His first answer? SpongeBob SquarePants! I suggested maybe he meant he’d like to work in a restaurant like SpongeBob – but apparently not. He gave me his best ‘Mummy don’t be stupid stare’ and informed me that he actually wanted to *be* SpongeBob. Silly me :)
Later on I was wondering; what do children want to be when they grow up?
I hit up Google and stumbled across this little gem. It’s from the CBBC chat forum. Hot on the heels of a report which suggested that there’s not much help offered in schools to assist children in deciding upon a career, they asked what kind of job would the children like to do when they’re older.
Over 150 children commented on the thread. The comments are wonderfully entertaining to read.
