{"id":5836,"date":"2018-05-03T07:27:34","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T06:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/?p=5836"},"modified":"2018-05-03T07:27:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T06:27:34","slug":"year-8-workshop-on-gangs-and-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/?p=5836","title":{"rendered":"Year 8 workshop on gangs and crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today our Year 8 pupils had a special guest speaker join them for a workshop on anti-gang and anti-crimes. Francis Ossei founder of charity Reform Restore Respect came in to speak with our pupils about the negative effects of gang crime. Francis set up the charity in order to inform young people about his own life experiences of being in a gang and then as a result spending 8 years 6 months and 5 days of a 15 year sentence in prison. The charity aims to raise awareness about the importance of education and prevent young people from engaging in petty and more serious offending.<\/p>\n

Francis is now committed to being part of the solution for safer communities and works closely with school teachers, social workers, youth offending teams, police officers and youth workers.<\/p>\n

During the workshop Francis openly shared his life story, he spoke about how he was bullied at school and rather than reaching out for help he joined a gang to gain respect and fear from his peers. He shared hard hitting truths about the drug related and violent crimes him and other gang members committed in Tottenham and then spoke about his arrest and time spent in prison. He showed pupils examples of prisoner\u2019s clothing and images of prison life. He talked to the pupils about the potential power of their own attitudes and actions and how to avoid behaviours that could lead to crime.<\/p>\n

Pupils learnt about the reasons as to why young people may join gangs: support, financial gains, sense of worth, sense of belonging, protection and a desire for excitement. They were told about how gangs may operate and the far reaching harm being in a gang can cause. They also learnt about how to prevent such circumstances from arising. Francis also discussed the rising issue of drug crime in London and that many drug dealers try to enlist younger children to sell their drugs for them.<\/p>\n

Francis explained to pupils that each of them has aspirations and should challenge themselves in order to obtain their aspirations through education. He highlighted the message that we all have life choices and we need to make choices based on reaching our goals and aspirations.<\/p>\n

Students showed great interest and inundated Francis with lots of questions. Following the session lots of the pupils commented on how emotionally effected they were by Francis\u2019 story and understood the importance of making the right life choices to achieve their aspirations. They also spoke about how they hadn\u2019t known how easy it is to become involved in gang crime and how quickly this can ruin your life and lead to anti-social behaviour and criminal convictions. One pupil mentioned how valuable it was to have someone speak about their real life experiences of something we read and hear about and now know understand better.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today our Year 8 pupils had a special guest speaker join them for a workshop on anti-gang and anti-crimes. Francis Ossei founder of charity Reform Restore Respect came in to speak with our pupils about the negative effects of gang crime. Francis set up the charity in order to inform young people about his own life experiences of being in a gang and then as a result spending 8 years 6 months and 5 days of a 15 year sentence in prison. The charity aims to raise awareness about the importance of education and prevent young people from engaging in petty and more serious offending. Francis is now committed to being part of the solution for safer communities and works closely with school teachers, social workers, youth offending teams, police officers and youth workers. During the workshop Francis openly shared his life story, he spoke about how he was bullied at school and rather than reaching out for help he joined a gang to gain respect and fear from his peers. He shared hard hitting truths about the drug related and violent crimes him and other gang members committed in Tottenham and then spoke about his arrest and time spent in prison. He showed pupils examples of prisoner\u2019s clothing and images of prison life. He talked to the pupils about the potential power of their own attitudes and actions and how to avoid behaviours that could lead to crime. Pupils learnt about the reasons as to why young people may join gangs: support, financial gains, sense of worth, sense of belonging, protection and a desire for excitement. They were told about how gangs may operate and the far reaching harm being in a gang can cause. They also learnt about how to prevent such circumstances from arising. Francis also discussed the rising issue of drug crime in London and that many drug dealers try to enlist younger children to sell their drugs for them. Francis explained to pupils that each of them has aspirations and should challenge themselves in order to obtain their aspirations through education. He highlighted the message that we all have life choices and we need to make choices based on reaching our goals and aspirations. Students showed great interest and inundated Francis with lots of questions. Following the session lots of the pupils commented on how emotionally effected they were by Francis\u2019 story and understood the importance of making the right life choices to achieve their aspirations. They also spoke about how they hadn\u2019t known how easy it is to become involved in gang crime and how quickly this can ruin your life and lead to anti-social behaviour and criminal convictions. One pupil mentioned how valuable it was to have someone speak about their real life experiences of something we read and hear about and now know understand better.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-publications"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5843,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5836\/revisions\/5843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatfieldsschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}