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.
Teaching the Teachers
Wow – it’s been yet another hectic week! No rest for the wicked, eh?
This week I’ve been working hard with our Regional Partner Simon Fielding on developing a new series of training courses for our Perform teachers.
Simon originally joined us 9 years ago as a Producer - and then soon became an Area Partner, visiting schools, evaluating teachers etc, but last term we decided to set him a brand new challenge. We’re focusing on growth here at Perform, but I’m absolutely passionate about ensuring that standards don’t slip as we grow. You see, unlike all other children’s drama classes, we don’t operate as franchises – instead, all Perform schools are centrally managed and they all run the same curriculum so we can maintain the high quality of our workshops across the board.
Over the years Simon’s been instrumental in helping to evolve the Perform style of teaching that we a call ‘learning through laughter’. He is staggeringly good at his job and such an inspiring trainer.
