.png)
Tom is a Co-Coach at Welbourne Primary School, in Haringey. When he's not supporting children on the Finding Futures programme, he works as a Relationship Manager for Gartner at their Holborn office.
Here's his story of the Into the Wild weekend...
This was my first time working with Yes Futures, and as such my first Into The Wild experience.
Me getting ready for raftbuilding with my student group.
It was really great for me to see the progress that the children made in confidence and resilience across the weekend – many of them facing and overcoming their fears during the activities. One example that will stick with me forever is Callum, one of the younger children in my group, who when he’d heard that ziplining and climbing were two of the activities that we would do, told me that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it as he had a fear of heights.
We had climbing as our second activity, and it was really great to see the rest of the children providing Callum with encouragement – shouting out pointers to him for where he could find his next hand / foot hold, and reminding him not to look down. He was able to get halfway up the climbing wall on his first attempt, and get all the way to the top the second time round with further coaxing and encouragement.
The look of pride on Callum's face when he got back to the bottom of the wall after his second effort was something that I will never forget – and seeing him go round and high five the rest of his team (who were all from different schools and had only met the day before!) for cheering him on was great to see. On the last day, I joined him on the Giant Swing – which I must say is a very apt name! I’m not great with heights myself, and so as we got to the top of the swing it was actually him encouraging me and comforting me, telling me not to look down and that everything would be ok.
I genuinely can’t think of a more rewarding weekend that I’ve ever had in my life – watching the progress that all of the kids made across the weekend made me so, so happy to see – and now I can’t wait to sign up for my second round of coaching!
To find out more about our programmes, please visit our 'What We Do' page.