This week Emily and I have had the pleasure of meeting and training our new PPA cover teachers for the 2019/20 academic year. Our week started in London where we introduced our current London staff to the new starters. For some people, the week before school starts is full of dread, sleepless nights spent thinking about traffic jams, and mentally preparing yourself for the 6.30am alarm. However, the week before school starts is one of my favourite weeks in the summer. It gives me the chance to catch up with all our national staff (some of whom I have not seen since the last summer training week), find out about their schools, how their year has been, and most importantly where they’ve been on their summer holidays. I also enjoy training our staff in the PPA cover subjects they will be delivering over the year. The training started with iJam which is our Music Production based PPA cover course. This involves making music, creating beats and manipulating digital tools to write and produce a song. Our new staff loved having a go at creating their own songs and using their teaching iPads. From London we ventured to Coventry to meet and induct our new Midlands team. Training in Coventry involved iMedia PPA cover subjects such as iJam and iProgram as well as Music PPA cover training in Samba, African Drumming and Music Theory. Overall both training sessions went extremely well, and our new staff can’t wait to get into schools and start educating and inspiring students.