Trips
Zara Todd: A Pleasant Surprise
Zara was born in 1985 in London. She attended a special school initially, then transferred to mainstream at the age of seven. She continued with mainstream education at secondary and then went on to university.
Here Zara describes being surprised by her school’s attitude to include her on the school journey to Russia.
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/a-pleasant-surprise.mp3
Transcript
I found out about this class trip to Russia. Now unlike any of my previous schools I was told about this trip at the same time as everyone else, I wasn’t excluded from being told about this trip, but because of my prior experience across my previous two schools I sort of assumed that that meant they weren’t intending me to go on this trip because prior experience told me that I wasn’t allowed to go on trips like that. And I actually got quite upset about the prospect of not being able to go when the rest of my class were getting really excited, and so my mum decided that rather than just me dismiss the possibility that she’d write a letter to my teacher and see what they felt about the possibility of me going on the trip. Turned out that they were fully expecting me to go on the trip and if that’s what I wanted to do they didn’t have a problem with it. I had a brilliant time at that school, couldn’t fault them and I would actually say they were probably as close as I got to inclusion within a mainstream setting.Explore more
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