Exciting opportunities with the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust

St Katherine’s pupils have been lucky enough to work with the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust again this year. We were chosen to be a pilot school for athlete mentors to visit the school and run group mentoring projects with students in order to help them to improve confidence, communication and resilience whilst working on a social action project of their choice. 

As part of the On Track to Achieve programme, we invited olympic trampolinist, Laura Gallagher, to work with our young people twice culminating in taking pupils to Axis trampoline park where they were taught a trampolining routine. We also recently hosted paralympian swimmer, Liz Johnson, who supported sixteen girls with a group mentoring project and led discussions on subjects of interest to them. 

In May we were unexpectedly asked to meet some very special guests in Bath. This was an incredible opportunity resulting in global media coverage. The St Katherine’s pupils did us extremely proud with their interest, engagement and pertinent questions for Dame Kelly Holmes and the Princess of Wales. Little did Deputy Head of House, Ms Nattress and SENDCO, Mrs Slater know that this would result in a bit of fame for a day and St Katherine’s trending on Twitter.

In July the pupils came up with the idea of arranging a trip to Weston Super Mare and the Trust helped to make this happen for the girls. We had a wonderful day out on Weston Pier and we truly pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone by riding the Weston Wheel. Many of the girls had never done anything like this before and felt first hand how resilient it makes them feel when you ‘do something every day that scares you’.

Mrs Slater, SENDCO