Jackie Hartley’s BLOG

I am now beginning to understand why Citizenship is being left out of the melting pot which is the Personal Development Curriculum. According to an article today in the Guardian it would seem that the Government is determined to make citizenship lessons a ‘key weapon in the fight against extremism‘. Apparently schools are not doing […]

Listening to Gordon Brown trying to sell himself as the next Prime Minister at the Labour Party Conference, I suddenly found myself thinking (in the voice of Catherine Tate’s horrible teenager) ‘Am i bovvered?’. I think it was at the point where he talked about the fact that he came into politics not to be […]

I gave a presentation the other evening at my local Creative Network about my trip to the CMI Conference in San Fransisco which they very kindly funded via a bursary. To an audience of about 70 artists, designers and crafts people (’creatives’, hence the Network) I talked about what I had learnt from the trip […]

Rummaging through the office for ideas on financial literacy I came across a great article in the Grand Designs magazine, written by Stephen Bayley entitled The misery of materialism. In the article Bayley points out that we now live in an age of ‘conspicuous consumption’ where ‘planned obsolescence’ makes waste almost obligatory as we continually […]

Just back from my Stress busting the NLP way course where the trainer, Dave Hodgson, told this story. He once had a client who had jumped out of a plane only to find that both his parachutes failed. As he fell to earth he began to rate his life on a scale of one to […]

I am wanting to include in the World of Work pack I am writing, some lessons on financial literacy. This is part of the enterprise education agenda and relates to the need for young people to learn about taking responsibility for financial decisions, being able to budget and plan financially and understand how money, credit […]

Having decided to overhaul our website I thought it would be a good idea to include a page which showed where our resources can be viewed, in careers resources libraries for professionals housed in Connexions companies around the country. I contacted them all to ask whether they had such libraries. Some do and gave details […]

It takes me ages to write one of our teaching packs. I set myself deadlines and miss them by miles. It’s not because I’m not trying, it’s more that once I get into a pack I spend ages crafting lessons that feel right to me. Also I keep getting sidetracked into training (which I love […]

Found out today that VT Hints, one of the biggest careers resources distributors, has ceased trading. All their orders are now being channeled across to Trotman. (The VT Lifeskills Publishing arm, ex Careers Productions, is still keeping going though, it’s just the distributorship that is folding.) It’s a bit worrying for us as they were […]