We were delighted to welcome the BBC to Archbishop Temple Church of England High School, on Thursday 10th November 2022, to talk to pupils in years 7 - 10. The BBC 100 Share Your Story tour is travelling across the country as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations, visiting 400 secondary schools to encourage pupils to share their own stories and enter the BBC Young Reporters competition.

The session began with a game featuring some classic BBC clips and pupils tried to guess what happened next. The presenter explained that storytelling is crucial to a range of different careers, such as advertising, news or sports reporting, game design, script writing amongst many others.

Next up, Thom Hanson, an Assistant Producer at the BBC, kindly shared his inspirational journey, talking about his career path and the hurdles he has overcome. He talked about taking risks, turning a negative situation into a positive and opening up to someone you trust when you are worried. He outlined to pupils that it’s okay to change paths if you feel something isn’t right for you and talked about dealing with setbacks before taking questions from pupils.

Lots of pupils were keen to ask questions, using a special rugby ball that had been adapted to become a microphone!

Following this, pupils watched an uplifting short film following Salma’s story, from being the only black, Muslim, female footballer in her school to becoming a semi-professional footballer playing for a top-level team, Brentford Women. It showed how Salma had overcome setbacks and now encourages other Muslim women and girls to get involved with football.

The session rounded up with some information about BBC Young Reporter. Mr Stringfellow, Head of English, and the English department would like to encourage pupils to get involved and enter the next competition. If any pupils have any questions or would like support in entering they may speak to their English teacher.

Finally, the presenters gave our pupils some top tips on public speaking and how they can support each other when they share their stories.

Thank you to the BBC 100 Share your Story team for visiting Archbishop Temple Church of England High School and sharing their stories with us!