A day in the life...
An example of a day at the Christchurch United Campus...
Busy day today…
I started with a training session with Paul at 8:45. It was a pretty intense session, plenty of skill-based drills, and a fair bit of fitness work. My personal focus at the moment is hitting a dead ball with dip, so I spent plenty of time on that this morning. Definitely a great way to start the day. Afterward, I headed straight to the showers.
At 10 a.m., we were all there for a teaching session with Steve and Paul in the Conference Room. Our focus this term is "Football Theory." Today’s session was about the styles of play we see at different clubs and why they choose them. We focused on Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, and Manchester City. The NCEA assessment we’re working on is a Level 3 English one: "Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, structures, and sustains an idea." Our task is to compare and contrast the different styles and philosophies of three clubs and meet the assessment criteria.
As part of this, we also had a Zoom call with one of the guys in the Academy at the Houston Dynamos. It was great to hear about the style they are trying to achieve through their Academy program. This definitely gave me a wider understanding of Football Theory.
At about 11:15 a.m., after the Zoom call, Steve ran a teaching session where he continued to unpack the word “fluent.” This was designed to help us better understand how to write a great piece for the assessment. We also looked at some exemplars of other students’ work, which was useful to see the quality we’re aiming for.
I didn’t go, but Steve ran a workshop for some of the guys who needed more support around the assessment. I feel like I’m doing pretty well at the moment and have received some good feedback so far.
At 12 p.m., we pausedx for lunch. I just brought a packed lunch. I had a bite to eat, and then a few of us headed over to the Football Tennis court and spent the rest of the break there.
After our half-hour lunch break, I got straight into the Chemistry work that I’m currently doing at the Ao Tawhiti Campus on Tuesdays. Jess, the teacher, has a Google Classroom set up for us, and there’s plenty of support for me to continue working on the assessments independently at the Christchurch United Campus. I spent about 45 minutes on the assessment and sent Jess a quick email to clarify a couple of things.
I’m currently focusing on Chemistry, Physical Education, and Biology at the Ao Tawhiti Campus on the two days a week I’m there. These three subjects will cover my Level 3 requirements and will get me University Entrance. I’m also working on Business Studies credits and English credits with Steve at the Campus. So, I’m confident I’ll easily achieve the 60 Level 3 credits I need for this year.
At about 1:15, I caught up with a couple of the other guys for a meeting about our Business Studies project. We’re currently working on creating a football-specific snack. At the moment, we’re working with a local nutritionist who’s helping us determine the best options for the snack. Today, we created a survey to send out to everyone at the club to see which flavour combinations would be most popular.
We wrapped up our meeting at 2 p.m as today is the day for my weekly 15 minute one to one meeting with Steve at 2:15pm. We looked at my NCEA plan and what I need to do in the next 2 weeks and then talked about my business studies goal. He connected me with Ginny from Good For which is very near the city campus, and could be a good source for healthy ingredients. We will visit her on Tuesday next week.
That gave me a couple of hours to relax until team training at 4:30 p.m. at the Football Centre.
An example of a day at the Ao Tawhiti Campus...
This morning I managed to get a bit of work done before I left home. My first class starts at 10am, so that gives me a bit of time to work on some of my assessments befoe I leave for school.
I took the bus into the bus exchange on Colombo Street, it’s right opposite Ao Tawhiti, so that makes for a seamless and quick journey from home.
I headed straight to my first class up in the lab, Level 7/8 Chemistry with Jess called “Oxidation and reduction reactions”, it’s a 2 hour class with a break for morning tea in the middle. This term we’re looking at what's inside a battery? We’re finding out about different types of batteries, the future of battery chemistry, higher energy density batteries to power things like electric cars. That assessment is going to be worth 3 credits for me. The second half of the term is going to be investigating real-world contexts where we look at how chemical equilibrium is the key to life on our planet, such as its role in regulating the pH of our oceans and our blood. The assessment is worth 5 Credits.
At lunch time, a bunch of us signed out on a Trust Licence trip and we headed into the CBD for a bit of fresh air. I grabbed some lunch from Fresh Choice and we just took some time in the Cathedral Square for a bit of a break.
After lunch I head to the Gym. I’m doing a Level7/8 Physical Education class with Alex. The title of this class is “Improve your Sport”. It’s perfect for me, I’ve obviously chosen Football. I’ve got a practical assessment to do that asks me track me performance across the different skills of football, provide evidence of this and then get it signed off by Paul out at United. That’s worth 4 Credits. The other assessment requires me to devise strategies for a physical activity outcome. I’m going to look at Physical performance improvement and I’m going to trial and make adjustments to my strategy to improve my performance, all of this is focussed around football. That’s also worth 4 credits.
I decided to stay after 2pm today to work on some of our business planning. We have organised a quick meeting with George, the Business teacher at Ao Tawhiti, to look through our initial planning for the Sports snack. We need some advice around marketing, we’re wanting to get some information out soon and need to work out the best way to get started.
That was it for the day.
I hopped back on the bus at the Exchange and headed home.