Ms Macdonald is one of the year 6 teachers at Mereside Academy. As well as being the PSHE lead for the school, she first became involved with the Community Trust by organising for our year 6 programme Unstoppable to be delivered.
From the start she has been very supportive of the programme; organising groups, staff and areas to teach in. She has also extensively evaluated the programme, providing knowledgeable insight on how to improve the delivery of the project.
In order to maintain funding for Unstoppable to continue to be delivered next year, the Community Trust needed to gain insight into how the participants felt about the project. Ms Macdonald was willing to extend her evaluation, both verbally and written, in order to help with this.
The Community Trust is currently working towards extending their PSHE provision. Ms Macdonald has acted in a consultancy role, using her own time to conduct meetings, and read funding applications; offering expert advice on how to move the PSHE provisions forward. The knowledge and understanding that she has shared has been invaluable to the current offer.
Ms Macdonald is also the class teacher of three boys who, after taking part in Unstoppable, have been signposted to the Community Trust’s Online Mentoring programme. The programme is currently in it’s developmental phase and when asked to take part, Ms Macdonald was more than willing to help, selecting the three boys who met the criteria.
Further to this she accessed game consoles so that the boys could take part in the mentoring scheme on school premises out of curriculum time. Again Ms Macdonald is heavily involved in the evaluation and development of the programme.
Ms Macdonald is extremely passionate about the welfare and emotional well-being of her students. The relationship she has built up with the Community Trust means her students benefit substantially from a variety of projects.
Jen Crofts our PSHE Manager said, “I have nominated Ms Macdonald due to her constant support of the Community Trust and her evident care of her students“.
