Wednesday 20 January 2010

Wildwood Education Department needs you!

Wildwood's award-winning Education department (BIAZA Best Education Project 2007) has become the victim of its own success.

The department has had a great response to the programmes it has been running over the last few years both for students and members of the public. This has given rise to a need for paid sessional tutors to help out during our busy summer season.

Sessional tutors are involved with all kinds of activities, such as taking primary schools on guided tours, showing children how to howl like a wolf or teaching woodland ecology to sixth formers! Sessional tutors need to be available to work during term time and are paid for days worked.

"We are looking for people who have some spare time even if it is just a couple of days a week" says Laura Hester, Education Officer for Wildwood "we are not necessarily looking for people who are experts though a good general knowledge of British wildlife or experience working with children, would be an advantage "

Wildwood is looking to run an Introductory day for interested people, offering a chance to see what a sessional tutor is expected to do, and are asking those who would like to take advantage of this opportunity by e-mailing Laura Hester on e-mail laura@wildwoodtrust.org before Thursday 4th February 2010.

A huge range of British animals can be seen at the Wildwood Discovery Park, for more information visit the website at http://www.wildwoodtrust.org/ or telephone 0871 7820087.

Wildwood is an ideal day out for all the family where you can come 'nose to nose' with British Wildlife. Wildwood offers its members and visitors a truly inspirational way to learn about the natural history of Britain by actually seeing the wildlife that once lived here, like the wolf, beaver, red squirrel, wild boar and many more.

Wildwood is situated close to Canterbury, just off the A291 between Herne Bay and Canterbury. For more information visit our website at http://www.wildwoodtrust.org/ or telephone 0871 782008.

Information for New Sessional Tutors

Wildwood Trust is very grateful to its sessional tutors for the generous giving of their free time to help us achieve our mission to inspire students and the general public about British wildlife and its conservation.

What Wildwood Trust offers

Varied and interesting work within a conservation environment

The opportunity to be part of a lively and sociable team

An opportunity to learn new skills and gain valuable work experience

The support of the Head of Education and team

What does a sessional tutor do?

As a sessional tutor, you would lead activities for school groups yourself, rather than just assisting Wildwood staff. Tutors are paid £60 per day and are on call for days when there are too many school activities booked for Wildwood's permanent staff to deal with. We are looking for people who are as flexible as possible in what they are willing to teach, which age groups they will work with and what days they are available. However, if you are only available on Mondays and Tuesdays, or only want to work with primary school children, we may still be able to find work for you, there will just be less of it than if you are available any day of the week and will teach any age. We cannot guarantee work every week or on particular days. Work for sessional tutors will be almost exclusively during term time.

The majority of our school visitors are primary schools and so you would spend most of your time with primary school groups. Activities include guided tours of the park, short meet an animal sessions with particular species and 45-minute workshops on a variety of topics.

Most school groups are with us between 10am and 2pm, so you would normally be expected to arrive before 10am in order to set up for the day and should be able to leave by 2:30pm.

What we are looking for

Don't panic! You don't necessarily have to be a qualified teacher or an expert on British wildlife. We just want people who are keen to get involved in wildlife education. Ideally, we are looking for people who have experience of working with children and who have good general knowledge about animals.

As a sessional tutor, before running any activity such as a guided tour on your own, you would have training, including chances to observe Wildwood staff taking a tour group round and also assisting in taking a tour. Basic training (to allow you to take a guided tour, a few meet an animal sessions and perhaps one workshop) would normally be expected to last four weeks, at the rate of one day per week. If you are able to come in more than once a week, training will take less time. We have a huge variety of workshops on offer for schools and we don't expect you to learn all of those at once! Tutors are not paid for any training days. Your first four weeks are considered a trial period, during which the education officer will provide a structured programme of activities to help you learn essential information including:

Familiarisation with the park and its facilities

Health and safety procedures and emergency guidelines

General policies and procedures which are relevant to your role

Orientation activities

Hands-on training for running activities.

For all posts involving working with children, you will need a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check before working with us. This is standard for anyone working with children.

The commitment we ask for

A willingness to learn and keep up-to-date with relevant information and to adapt to new developments and initiatives

A commitment to attend basic training sessions as part of your induction and development and refresher training when required

A commitment to spend time developing an excellent knowledge of the park layout and species represented within the animal collection, including individual animals, to enable you to answer most questions

A commitment to delivering a professional standard of information service to our visitors

No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis