Meet Andrew Wright, Founder and Chief Executive of Action Your Potential
This month we’re finding out more about the work of Action Your Potential (AYP) an organisation which support students, parents and carers, and school staff to become #NeuroNinjas.
Tell us about Action Your Potential
Our mission at AYP is to help everyone become a #NeuroNinja. Our team use neuroscience to teach students how their brain works and how to get the most out of it every day. Using our #NeuroNinja Learning Hub, coaching and webinar courses for parents and carers we support a whole school community to develop powerful daily habits that transform experience. We help students to learn and remember more by teaching them a system of daily habits to help them do their very best in their exams.
The human brain is amazing. We have 86 billions neurons in our incredible brain, and these neurons have 300 trillion connections. If we understand our brain’s systems, how they work, what they do and how to get the most out of them, we can manage our experiences more effectively in our brains every day. If we learn how to manage our worry system and our brain’s natural negative biases we can become more resilient in the face of change. That’s particular important when it comes to exam anxiety.
How does Action Your Potential work with schools and colleges?
We work with all year groups, and we offer a subscription service for schools and colleges to develop a programme with us. This can include workshops with all year groups, talks to parents and carers, webinars, well-being support for staff, coaching for young people and fortnightly visits to the school or college. Working with parents and carers is key and we provide coaching support adults to support their children and themselves.
A practical example of this is our work with young people to develop learning routines. In order to remember things, we need to go back over learning on a daily basis – think back over lessons, key words, topics. We have study capture sheet which we suggest spending five minutes on daily at GCSE level and ten minutes at post 16 study. These capture sheets develop skills to revise, reading back through previous days and writing new days learning. This builds rapid repetition using neuroscience techniques.
We support students to develop a daily system of learning routines to help them learn more and remember more. The brain’s learning and memory systems work in specific ways. Only three types of information get into long-term memory.
How has the Sussex Learning Network supported your work?
Sussex Learning Network has supported schools to be able to access different aspects of our school’s subscription that they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to. We are currently working with The Regis School delivering all day year 10 and 11 workshops. We have delivered one to one evening coaching at Cavendish School and last year we worked closely with The Academy Selsey.
What do school staff make of your programme?
They recognise the importance of the additional support for their young people and their families. Schools are doing a huge amount, and our programmes are about young people and families understanding what they can do themselves with these techniques to build on the learning, improve mental health and well-being every day. AYP runs a weekly live stream called a Well-Being Work-Out at 8am on Wednesdays for staff and parents and carers. These focus on mental health which can be used for the adults and the young people they support. Recent topics include ‘why can’t I sleep’ and ‘how to manage intrusive thoughts’.
What impact is your work having on the young people you work with?
The key impact is enabling people to understand themselves better and how to change behaviours. Our system provides techniques to pass exams but also to manage your life and your well-being. We believe in investing as much in your well-being as in the academic work and the learning. Well-being is a part of an effective strategy for productivity and learning, and it must be every day, not just at the weekend. Most young people we work with get at least one grade above the grade predicted to them before they start our programme. This is because they’ve changed what they do and are therefore about to change the outcome.
Where can people find out more?
We ran a webinar entitled Build Future You earlier this month which you can view here. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook Youtube, LinkedIn or Instagram visit our website www.actionyourpotential.org or email Andrew directly andrewwright@aypuk.com
If you’re a school or college interested in finding out more about working with Action Your Potential please contact Debra Vice-Holt d.vice-holt@sussexlearningnetwork.org.uk