We were all sad to hear that Annette Cotterill decided to retire at the end of 2011 after 28 years of running The Learning Through Action Trust. I joined the team in the early days when PSHE was introduced as a strong focus to support young people with their decision making processes. I moved up the LTA ranks to the position of Creative Manager where I loved creating new material and working with a team of teacher facilitators and gap-year student presenters. Role play created a reflective link between learning about the various facts associated with the PSHE curriculum and the decision making process when faced with real life situations. I have always felt passionate about this work.

For the past four years, I have been running my own company – Pottytree Puppets where I have used a similar interactive approach to working with puppetry.

As a direct result of my history with LTA, Annette has given all the PSHE workshop material to me and some of the team members have joined me in order to keep this fine work going. This is including Melissa Waldron who has led the LTA workshops for the past four years. We are continuing with the holistic, interactive approach interspersed with relevant facts. All the LTA history workshops have been taken on by Ufton Court who now employ Richard – the king of running these programmes in school.

It is a new beginning to truly inspirational and meaningful work and I am very excited to be leading the way forward.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to hear more about the work we are involved with, to book a workshop or be considered as one of our gap-year presenters for September 2013.

Jo Bryant