Drug Awareness

Today, we had the pleasure of welcoming speaker, Paul Hannaford, to our school. His presentation to Year 8, 9 and 10 was informative, emotive, hard-hitting and relevant. The message to our students was though-provoking and he used his own experience to make our young people think about their choices and the pathways that are open to them. A mixture of his own story and role play to go through how to get out of difficult situations proved popular and important.

Paul's life story is on his website, click this link to take a look:

https://www.paulhannaford.com/

Quote from Paul's website:
Over the past 10 years I have built a successful career educating over 400,000 school children from multiple year groups ranging from year 4 up to sixth form, tailoring the message appropriate to their ages.
I offer workshops and talks about the dangers of addiction, drugs and alcohol as well as involvement in gangs, knife crime and county lines. Through my own experiences as a former addict of over 20 years, I can convey an incredibly powerful and hard-hitting message. I travel extensively throughout the UK, visiting primary and secondary schools, youth centres, young offenders.

Here are a few quotes from our students:

‘I think the way he taught about his experience was good as his story was shocking and hearing it come from a personal experience made it more memorable as you feel more emotional towards it. I have never seen the whole year group so shocked and silent, and I think ‘scaring’ people into not doing drugs is the best way to teach it at this time. People took notice of the message, unlike other times where it can be forgotten easily.’

‘I think that the speech from Paul was emotional and really bought to light the dangers of the now romanticized subject. It shows how much it effects family, mindset and how it changes your life. I think the evidence/pictures of what happened really showed the effects of drugs.’

‘Todays workshops made me understand that when anyone is in a rough situation, they can always get out if it in some way. Also, it was quite emotional to see the impact that a couple of decisions could have on the whole family.’

‘The assembly was great! It was quite sad what happened to him after taking the drugs, it was quite graphic, but it made me think. This really makes us have second thoughts when making bad choices and the impact of the choices we make’.

Mrs A Kovic