Teamwork skills develop at RAF Waddington

On 15th March the students from Barnes Wallis Academy visited 8 Squadron at RAF Waddington to complete part of their Level 1 Teamwork programme.

We started the morning with a presentation from 8 Squadron on their plane the AWACS. The students loved hearing about the aircraft’s capability and how its role is essential to the RAF’s capability. The students then had the opportunity to go inside the aircraft where Sgt Harrison explained the different aircrew roles and how they use teamwork and communication to achieve their missions. The students were also lucky enough to sit inside the cockpit and be shown how everything works by one of the aircraft’s pilot.

One of the students said “Sgt Harrison was great today. I learnt so much from him and how they use brilliant teamwork skills to get stressful jobs done. It really helps the group seeing effective teamwork in real jobs and seeing how we can use those same skills in our own tasks.”

After some hot food, it was the students’ chance to demonstrate all those communication and teamwork skills they had learnt in the morning during a pool drills activity. The instructors from SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Extraction) demonstrated on dry land how the life vests and life rafts work and how to work as team to get everyone inside and look after each other in any eventuality, from a man over board to the raft taking on water.

Next, it was time to practise the real thing in the pool. Dressed in their life vest the students took on the challenge of getting everyone safely inside and rescuing the ‘man over board’ ably played by the students themselves.

The students rose to the challenge and loved every minute of it. One of the students said “It’s really brought the group so close together. We really are a team and we can achieve so much together now.”

On behalf of JET and all the students, we would like to thank everyone for making this day happen and for supporting the students.