Month: August 2018

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and today’s blog will be basically continuing with my experience with FWT. This will include the good, the bad and the outrageous times that happened to me, along with the tasks that I have done within a short amount of time, the people I met and my overall experience with FWT, so grab a snack ? get comfortable ?, because this blog post that you’re going to read ? is very interesting.

(DISCLAIMER: Please note that this is on my personal experience working with them based on what I went through and not a review. Just because I went through some of the rough experiences, it doesn’t mean that they are bad company to work with, in fact they are amazing people to work with and they provide amazing services for their customers and staff)

When I first started working at FWT, it was really good at first. I met the staff of the company and they are much nicer people I’ve ever met than some of the people working in the job shop ? and they were really making sure that I was taking part in any of the tasks provided, no matter what it is or what it could be. I even helped out with the coffee mornings that usually happens on Wednesday morning and Friday morning. The Wednesday coffee mornings is usually located around Hill Fields Coventry and the Friday coffee mornings are usually located in FWT and within the time period we have to provide an activity that can keep them occupied the world to have a coffee and tea at the same time along with some biscuits to have too ?.

During my time with and FWT there have been some bumps on the road including one time when I was supposed to happen right now but I was sitting there actually have a conversation and having a meal that we all participated in making but at the same time but when I was having a conversation with one of the lectures of the healthy hearts program which we used to have though and after everybody who was in the club gone, one pacific lady who works for FWT told myself and the other person with us and give us a little wording she gave one person all the positives and telling me with the negatives are telling me that I didn’t do anything at all though and told me to eat less and to concentrate with the task in hand.

After finishing off a day at work that I want her and that I started crying towards my mum and she said what’s wrong and I told her this person was telling me off for absolutely no reason for the task at hand I even told I did fall off a bit but she told me to eat less and to concentrate with the task in hand, I don’t understand I need to concentrate with the task in hand however it doesn’t mean she can insult me based on my body figure what I was actually participating and what really angered me the most though was I was actually one of the participants who was taking part in a healthy hearts project ?. Which she asked us a couple of days ago if we would be interested in taking part and we both said yes on taking part of the healthy hearts project so we can get a feeling what it’s like to be involved with it and we can also recommend over to other people who wanted to do the exact same thing as we were doing.

Although from that experience we started off with a rough patch, but as we go along within the time period we tend to work well together and even had fun doing it along with working on ways to promote activity in a way we went straight to hand out leaflets we actually spoke to the people who actually interested on taking part on activity and even started planning out activities over the next couple of weeks for coffee mornings for both Wednesday morning and Friday morning ?. We even managed to work together on planning out lessons that for the next group of people who are interested in learning to do some computer work and have others out with their work including creating a CV having to looking for jobs and and even worked together on creating leaflets for the upcoming sessions for coffee morning.

There are two things that happened to me that were outrageous to me and both of them are based on the language that I speak in. When I was helping in a room with a few ladies on an IT course, to whom one of them were saying to me “why don’t you speak in you mother tongue?” at that time I was too hesitant to say something about it and the other lady said to me “if you’re working in a place like FWT, you must be able to speak in the language that you were given” at that moment I kept my mouth shut the entire time thinking that these people are wrong because if I start speaking mother tongue just to please them, it will feel like I’m destroying another part of me.

Another outrageous moment that happened to me was still based on the same topic, but this time that one person had decided to cross the line and it all happened in coffee morning on Friday and we were doing quilling. During our session on quilling, the lady asked me about my cookery skills that and I said it with honesty “I don’t cook as much as I should.” But that was fine she was like okay but you need to do more but when she came up to me about the language I explain to her that it will be too much for me to handle i.e. I would easily get mixed up with the two languages and what she said to me really frustrated me the most and her response was “you’ve got bad parents” and my response back to her was “if I have bad parents I won’t be standing here in front of you.”

Apart from all the bad things that happened to me there have been some good things that happened to me during my time with FWT and what other things is after participating with a healthy hearts club in which I’ve helped around with the warm-ups that I demonstrated with them from my kickboxing training (coming soon ?) from my back then 12 years which is now 15 years of training, including some of the warm ups that I did during training into learning some of the basic techniques.

My overall experience with FWT has been absolutely amazing and even though there were some ups and downs along the way, we still managed to get along as a team and I truly loved working with them. I had a great time from the experience of working with them. From meeting people and helping them with their basic IT skills into having a lot of conversations in coffee mornings, activities planning for the upcoming weeks, putting everything away from the coffee morning sessions, meeting the people at the front desk as well as doing the admin work and even going out on the streets in order to spread the word out about FWT too ??.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog. I’m so sorry for the blog post being so long. Please stay tuned for the next post and don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and todays blog post will be on my experience working with Foleshill Women’s Training (FWT) including how I got the job the interview process along with the terms and conditions that was included with the opportunity as well as the interview process that was involved within the YPEPS scheme, So grab a snack ?and get comfortable ?, because this blog post is going to be an interesting one.

I found out about the job vacancy from YPEPS, which was found at the job shop at the window, which was during my time doing work experience at the job shop and I told one of the staff members from YPEPS about the vacancy and has already managed put forward a cover letter for the vacancy and my CV being attached and managed to send them over. The only downside to this there is that the work placement only lasts for six months. A couple days later, I received an email about applying for the YPEPS vacancy and told me the date and time as well as where to go for the interview.

Before I even got there to the actual place for the interview I had to do some research though and also ring them up there to find out where is it based though as well as me and my mum went to on a trip to find out where it is so I’m aware of the location and thank goodness I managed to get there on time and I was feeling a bit nervous as well for the interview. The funny thing about it is that on the email, the timing for the interview was 11:15am, but we arrived there two hours early and what I mean “we” I meant me and my mum as well as the fact that my mum thought that the interview was 9:15am ?. Even though I arrived two hours early for the interview, it still gave me the chance to do some last minute research on FWT by looking around the room and and to see what’s around me and obviously of course I did do some research at home before the interview.

Luckily I took some deep breaths before they called me in and they asked me some questions about the role for the ICT coordinator and there were two other girls were also going for the role before me. After waiting for a very long time, it was my turn to go forward for the interview and to be asked on the questions about the role and what I know about the company as well as what I’ve been doing this since leaving the previous jobs and my response to them was that I had work experience and all of those work experience placements are not paid at all ?.

There were some questions from the interview that I was hesitant about it so I asked them to repeat it again and then I gave them my answer afterwards and there were also some questions in the interview that I was confident on and they even asked me if I had any questions of my own and I literally asked them was “When will I find out if I have the job” and “Is there any other training that I needed to do?” After coming out of the interview, I thought a bit tense so me and my mum went back home after catching two buses and it just feels like I needed some rest afterwards.

I received a phone call from FWT asking me if I was available on a certain date and I said yes and their response was I will see you on this date coming and that’s on time meaning I’ve actually got the job ?? and I says I put the phone down and told my mum the news, she was in tears and I was also in tears as well and finally getting to realise that thank goodness there is somebody out there that does see a potential in me ☺️ and as result of the news I went straight over to the job centre and told them about the news and the two were thrilled and then the next stop was the job shop and I told my advisor about the interview and I told them the good news and she too was over the moon when I told her the news.

As I managed to close one chapter and opened up a new one, I arrived at FWT there is another entrance on the side that only staff to go through and myself and two other people coming into the building and I how to introduce myself to the two ladies arrived and they were the nicest sweetest ladies that I ever met and this is just the beginning of my six-month placement and unfortunately the downside to this is that it didn’t guarantee me a full-time job ?.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog and please stay tuned for the next post which will be on my continued experience with Foleshill Women’s Training (FWT). Don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and today’s blog post will be basically continuing my work placements from the one company Beyond 2030 and from leaving there going into the job centre going through a two week training program to see if I’m actually capable on getting an apprenticeship with the job centre as well as my other work experiences that I went through I will be going through the good the bad and the horrifying experiences that I went through, so grab a snack?and get comfortable ?, because this blog post will be a long and interesting one too ?☕️.

After telling the main trainer before I actually got into the work experience and volunteering with the beyond 2030 is what I told him that I had autism and his reply is that “everyone has autism, in fact normally everyone who comes into the session is and what I told him “no I actually have autism” he was in shock that he didn’t know I actually have it, which I forgot to mention it on from my previous blog (sorry for not mentioning it from there ?)

When I was working with beyond 2030, I’ve learned so much from there including helping out people who are struggling with the work that was being provided, filling up the jugs of water, making sure the tea and coffee is already prepared as well as helping out those who needed additional help with the work being provided from the work folders. The best thing about helping out beyond 2030, going from a work experience placement into voluntary is getting to know the people a bit better and getting to realise the main relationship between student and a teacher, just realising it came from schools both primary and secondary as well as from college and university too ?.

After finishing my voluntary experience with Beyond 2030, it’s time for me to try something else though and that is to get an opportunity to gain an apprenticeship with the job centre doing customer service that was given to me by the job centre and from that point on I thought to myself, maybe I should give it a try and see what happens, so I went in at the job centre to see what was going on along with a group of young people doing exact same thing with me as well and experience whether it’s completely different first we had to go through the main entrance of the job centre, then we went through to the security office to sign in and they have taken us over to a meeting room where they go to explain to us how the program works and we basically continued it for two weeks.

The good news is that I got the experience that I needed when going through the two weeks program during my time there you have to go through a computer program that you have to learn for a short period amount of time and if you can pick it up well if you’re guaranteed for apprenticeship and if you didn’t pick up the pace, you’re won’t be available to get it. Unfortunately for me I didn’t actually get the apprenticeship, however I did get an additional two more weeks to go through my work experience at the job centre to see what it’s like though to go upfront in person as well as making guides on how to create social media accounts and finding job vacancies for the people who are looking for jobs and making the job vacancies presentable too.

After finishing off the four week work experience placement at the job centre, it was time for me to try working at the retail sector and I was strongly against it at first, because to me it felt a bit boring for me to work at and not being challenging, but my boss convinced me to give it a try and see what happens. I gave it a shot at a charity shop and luckily it wasn’t even far from the job centre so I can sign it back up for this many times as I can and from working in there is where the good the bad and the ugly starts to kick in. The good thing about working in there is that there are people out there who actually do understand where you’re coming from especially with the manager who actually understands me for the fact that I have autism and has told me on where I went wrong privately away from the customers.

The bad thing I had from working there is when I’ve made that very same mistake The assistant manager told me off about the front of customers and that is really wrong what is already been disciplined by the manager and not only that The assistant manager and another volunteer who recently started volunteering in the shop had started complaining the situation to her as if they were BFFs along with that is I have to work until 5 PM, which is also missing out my personal life too, but apart from those bad things that happened in there, we still managed to go along well in there and even learned for the fact that majority of the funding goes to charity and whatever stock is leftover get shipped out towards other countries who needed it the most.

After leaving the charity shop and attempted to go towards another educational program as well as getting dismissed very early, because of their criteria didn’t match to their standards at all, I decided to do a two week work placement with the job shop and this is where the horrific experience comes into play. From working at the job shop it was great at first but as I was getting along with the tasks involved and the people to talk to, especially with one person though he told me to take advantage of it though well I can within the two week work placement and he was absolutely right and I did take about a job out there by applying more job vacancies within the job shop that helped me increase my chances of getting a job. There have also been some bad times working there, especially with this one pacific person who surprisingly still works there ??.

While I was working there, The specific person told me to tell the person who is working on the computer to stay a little longer as much as he likes just to make him feel comfortable about himself and this person sadly is homeless and I followed her advice exactly on what she told me and I was told him that “you can stay here as much as you like” and he said “no no that’s fine I’m just about to go” and after I followed her advice and told him to stay has much as he likes she gave me a tongue lashing, right in front of everybody who works there as well as the customers in the job shop how pathetic is that ??? and just to make things even more worse as it was before when I was helping out a customer based on his login issues, so I helped him out as much as I can, but I couldn’t figure it out and have to ask for help from the team and tell me to go help someone else out and out they will get it sorted out.

Another incident that happened on the same day is when I helped out another customer out based on his CV and I gave him the option on asking for help from a job coach and he said no, so I helped him out with the CV and it was basically it was adding in parts to his CV and surprise surprise the very same envious job coach decided to intervene once again and said “what are you doing over there you shouldn’t be helping this guy at all, go help someone else” and who she’s on about there to help someone else was the very same guy who had login issues and was already been dealt with, talk about unprofessionalism and I don’t really see why didn’t the manager step in and deal with this person in the first place ????.

Despite the negative experience that I got from working with this specific person and I even got some positives from the other work colleagues, I’ve learnt so much from working in the job shop including meeting people and assisting them with their job search activities, working on the photocopier, changing the printer ink, arranging and rearranging leaflets and handouts as well as proofreading their application forms and their CVs too ????.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my other work experiences blog and I’m so sorry for having the blog post really long. Please stay tuned for the next post which will be on my experience with Foleshill Women’s Training (FWT) and don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and today’s blog post will be on my work experiences since leaving work in a primary school and I’ve got so much to tell you on what I’ve been through ever since I left, I will be telling you the experiences that I went through going through the job centre and the experiences that I went through during my time there and my inspiration to change career path from being a teaching assistant into becoming a mentor/coach, so grab a snack ? and get comfortable ?, because this blog post is going to be a long one.

Ever since I left working in a primary school in December 2010, I decided to go on Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) so I can look for work and I get paid at the same time, unfortunately there are some obstacles along my way and when I was on Jobseeker’s Allowance, one of those things happened within the experience is that they swapped me around for every six months. For example if you sign in downstairs and you tell them what you been up to in the past two weeks and you told them the amount of jobs you applied for and they will tell you when you are going to get paid.

If you were about the sign in on that week and you told them the reason why you did not apply for any jobs whatsoever, because you had to revise for an exam that you’re trying to gain a qualification in that sector or having issues at home/going through some personal problems in life, that means you will be given a letter that will take you to another building where you have to listen to the people who work at the job centre telling you the importance on signing in on a regular basis as well as applying for jobs and the essential part on filling in the book.

The book that I was given by the job centre was clearly based on what jobs that I applied for, the time and date that you applied for, what will be the next action for you do and when will you find out about the outcome of it too. Along with applying for jobs is also the management to apply for it, i.e applying for it online or by hand with the application form and even in some cases that you have to provide evidence to prove to them that you applied for the job along with the outcome of it too ?.

After applying for a number of jobs as a teaching assistant and gaining no success for applying nor getting the actual job, however I did managed to get through to interviews, I even went through to teaching agencies in order to increase my chances on finding work but unfortunately I received no luck and the biggest problem I have though was finding references especially the work reference from back then the deputy headmistress who had a no nonsense approach and she never even gave me a chance to speak for myself at all ? the kind of treatment that I was given by her was outrageous and shocking too.

During my time at applying for jobs I also went to a company called Sencia that helped me increase my chances of getting a job and even in some cases I even had some interviews from agencies and even got some advice and guidance there on how to update on my curriculum vitae (CV), the hints and tips on going through to an interview as well as the courses that are provided by them in order to increase my chances of finding work. Unfortunately in that case it didn’t last long and I went back to the job centre and they also gave me a letter to go over to the job shop and listen to what the workers have to say on this upcoming reasons why we couldn’t get any work and I was given a letter to attend a course from the job shop and the name of the course and was given the time and date to start the course.

I went onto a course that was provided by the job shop and the company was called Beyond 2030 and what I was learning from them was level 1 in employability and from that point on, my life has changed completely and I realised that I wanted to become a mentor/coach instead of a teaching assistant and I felt really great and astonished about making this career change. I was given the advice about learning to do PTLLS (Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector) which is now changed into AET (Award in Education and Training).

I even told the job centre about making a career change and the reaction that I got from them was a negative one and they started questioning about my career change and was not even looking at it in a positive prospective point of view ?. Despite the negative reaction that I have received from them, I still decided to follow my career aspiration on becoming a mentor/coach and I remained positive from that point even though it didn’t guarantee me a job, but I still gained the experience that I wanted to have on what it’s like to become an assistant mentor.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my other work experiences blog. Please stay tuned for the next post which will be other work experiences being continued and don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog and today’s blog will be on my continued work life as a Teaching Assistant (TA) going from volunteering twice a week in reception to working full time as a so called student teaching assistant along with the benefits on being a teaching assistant and the drawbacks on working as a teaching assistant, so grab a snack ? and get comfortable, because this blog is going to be a long one.

As I continued to volunteer at a primary school and was doing as I was told to do by the deputy headmistress, deep inside of me, I felt a bit disappointed that I couldn’t challenge myself with a higher age group and being capable enough to move forward being thought to her mind that it would be too hard for me to handle it and at the same time, so I was pretty left with no choice, but to help around with the children in reception, but at least it’s something to work with and the staff in reception are good with it as well ?.

When I first started working in reception, I was nervous ? on what I got myself into especially with the children, they never see a new face coming over to them and helping them out. After bringing the children into the classroom and settling down, it was time for the teacher to introduce me to the children and had a mixed reaction from the children. Despite the fact that they’ve never seen a new person coming into the classroom for the first time and some of them were happy to see me and some of them were confused or even excited to see me in reception helping them out in the classroom.

Normally in year 2, they have a routine on what is going to happen on certain days of the week and even on when to have breaks and even give out homework to the children to complete over the weekend. However with the reception, once they have done their session, they go and play with the activities being provided by the teachers and it gets hectic most of the time ? and even the teachers try to attempt the children and gave them encouragement to put them away and for some of the teaching assistants have to put them away and clear everything away and then come back into helping the children out.

On how I received my full-time payment from a company is by the aspire scheme and what they do though is basically to help those who are actually trying to get into work who have actually got learning difficulties or disabilities. The only downside on this is that it will only last up to 9 months, however on the plus side you get the feeling of what it’s like to work full time and if you do well on your nine month work placement, you’ll be guaranteed a full-time job. Unfortunately I didn’t get the full-time job and when I questioned the deputy headmistress on where I went wrong and how I can improve on it for the next time, the man from the aspire scheme next to me said “there isn’t going to be a next time because you didn’t get the job in the first place” ? instead of helping me to improve on myself they actually gave me other options that are below my career aspirations and I felt really sad and angry about this experience and I was really passionate on improving myself better but instead I was pretty much going backwards on finding a job instead of going forward ?.

I started working full time in a primary school in March 2010 and finished working in that very same primary school till December 2010. During my new adventure on helping out with the children in reception, there have been some ups and downs when it comes to helping out in reception including helping a child with multiplication and the teacher didn’t have the guts to tell me not to teach them multiplying. If he told me not to teach them about it, I would have been fine with it, but instead he didn’t say anything about it until I mentioned it to him and when I told him about it, he told me not to teach them multiplication and the reason for it is because that they will not understand how multiplication works anyway ?.

Along the way of my journey some of the teaching assistants decided to bully me based on my appearance including one time when I scratch my head and format that is based on sweat in my scalp and when I told her that my head was itchy because of sweat, she still denied it and was still convened that was nits. From that point on I was angry that she didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was sweating from my kickboxing session that I had from the previous day ?. The same pacific teaching assistant thought I had nits and was talking negative things about me behind my back, who still managed to get away with murder and clearly doesn’t deserve to work in a school at all.

Another incident occurred when the supply to teaching assistant and the other teacher were having a conversation about the children and the staff all together and to make things worser than ever before, the so-called supply teaching assistant considered me as acting like one of the kids, literally the same place as the other teaching assistant has said about me and that is right behind my back ?. I was so angry that she said that about me and I really wanted to speak up about this, but the problem with that is if I tried to speak up about it, they will give me dirty looks, they would never trust me again and even worse they will consider me as a snitch.

Despite all the negative things that happened to me, there have been some positive experiences that happened to me in my life for example I managed to gain some experience working in a lower year groups meeting new children, getting to know the new staff especially the new ones and meeting the parents and asking for my opinion on how that child have done and I gave them my honest opinion I know you told them to expect to go speak to the main teacher because they are the ones that deal with them the most and I’ve got some thank you gifts from the parents which was so sweet and grateful that I’ve actually managed to help out on some the children out and I really felt appreciated with the amount of experience on working in a school ☺️.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my continued work life as a Teaching Assistant (TA) blog and I’m so sorry for being so long. Please stay tuned for the next post which will be other work experiences and don’t forget to leave a comment below on my blog post and spread the word out about my blog too. ???