13 January 2016
So we get the phone call… Kerry decides that she is entering us in to the NMT awards for “Nursery Environment” and Tash for “Nursery Chef”!!
How do we feel about this? Absolutely amazed… of course we will win how could we not? We do everything that is expected of us, and our children at all of the Nurseries seem to love their experiences and joining in with the activities or playing with the resources that we provide and offer to them. We use the EYFS like a bible so we know that we do this right and that the children’s learning and development is extremely well planned for. It’s going to be a walk in the park!! Or is it???
Sue and Leanne you are going to London to be interviewed for this competition: Kerry as always is so prepared and gives us lots of prompts and a presentation to read over so that we know what to expect and what to discuss with the judges. Nervous? What me and Sue… not at all!! We travel to London the night before so that we can arrive for our interviews on time. Although we know our presentation inside out it’s still on our minds that we have no idea what questions we will be asked. We have been given a lovely album full of wonderful photographs with quotes from the EYFS showing exactly what we deliver and how well we deliver it, that Kerry had prepared for us since entering the competition. If you were to look through this I’m sure you would think ‘Wow those environments are amazing!’.
So we arrive for the interview we are given a name badge and told that we have to pose for a photograph. If you know me and Sue you will know that this did not impress us as we do not like to take selfies and we definitely don’t like posing (honest unless it’s a funny face). This aside we still did it because we knew that’s not what we are here for, we are here to win this competition.
Smiling away we then take a seat on a table with a group of very nice pleasant and friendly girls who also work in a Nursery. These girls are our competition… how can we compete with such lovely ladies? We are then told that our interview is first. Maybe that’s a good thing, at least it’s over and done with we thought. So we sit and wait for our names to be called, and the lady comes over and tells us the judges are ready for us. We make our way to the judges room and the lady knocks on the door. Sue has hold of the album and I have the presentation in my right hand with my fingers crossed on my left. The judges invite us in and so we enter the room. It’s a room bigger than some of our Nursery rooms, just an empty room with a small table in the middle covered in a black stretchy fabric and on the opposite side to our chairs are three judges sitting and watching us as we approach them. We shake their hands uncrossing our fingers and swapping my presentation over to the other hand and then we take our seats.
The interview: The three judges introduce themselves and myself and Sue introduce ourselves too. The rest is pretty much a blur. I remember being asked about our environments and how and why we believe they are the best. We talk about the activities that we do, we discuss the EYFS, we talk about equal opportunities and how we promote development for individual needs. I do remember talking about the activity that we did in the dance room when we had the paint out and we drew ourselves on the mirrors making marks as we made movements with our arms and bodies. I remember the judges looking really impressed with this idea and then laughing out extremely loudly when Sue said how much the cleaner didn’t like us after this activity.
There was then a knock on the door and we were reminded that we had five minutes left. Five minutes to finish it off but that didn’t seem like long enough surely we could go over this time. One of the judges then asked why we think that we deserve to win this award and why we feel that our environments are better than any of our competitions. So my answer was that when I walk in to any of our rooms I get really excited when I see the environments and what the staff have planned for the children. If I feel like this in my 30s then can you imagine how a child feels when they see it. Imagine if you had never been to a nursery before and you walked in to one of our Nurseries I believe that you would never want to leave it’s that good. Times up!! We shake the judges hands smile politely at each one and leave the room finally taking a breath as neither Sue or I had stopped to breathe for the whole time we were in there.
We are taken back to the room where everybody is either waiting to be interviewed or is sitting relaxing as they have already had theirs. As we take a seat back at the table we were previously sitting at, the girls we were talking to before pull out all of their props from under the table. It was as if they had rolled up their room and brought it with them. They were then called off to be interviewed. We sat with everybody else discussing why they were there and for which competitions and what they thought of the process. We were all very calm and openly discussed the questions that we had been asked. When everybody came back from the interview process we were then taken in to a different room with all of our competitors and told to sit around a table just talking amongst ourselves whilst the camera man recorded us on film. This was totally not staged and we didn’t feel awkward at any moment of course. The man behind the camera then asked us to tell the person opposite from us what our name was what our job role was and how we got to London. Obviously we came to London on roller blades, on space ships, by camel you name it we did it. This was a good ice breaker and everybody seemed confident and happy.
It was time to go home so we headed for the train. We had weeks to wait now until we found out if we were the winners. Previous to the interview we were so confident as we couldn’t believe that anybody was better than we were but on the way back we had decided that the girls we had been talking to had won it. Definitely not because they were better but simply because they were able to show off a lot of their things and didn’t have lots of luggage to carry instead. We discussed how it would have been nice for the judges to visit the nurseries and see the environments for themselves. Either way we are winners no matter what and we couldn’t wait to find out.
The Awards: So who goes to an award night and doesn’t wear their best outfit? Not Evolution childcare that’s for sure. Myself, Sue, Amy, Tash (our amazing Nursery chef), Lynn and Lucy made our way to the hotel with time to spare to get ready and look presentable. We were so excited especially Tash who couldn’t decide if she was more nervous about winning and having to get up on stage or losing and hiding behind her napkin (We were all 100% sure she would win). When we walked in to the room it was ball gowns galore or men in tuxedos everybody looked so different from when we saw them at the interview stage.
The atmosphere was tense at first but then as we saw people we recognised we all began to relax and enjoy the night. The meal was scrumptious… I’m sure Lynn will agree that the salmon was cooked to perfection as she had everybody elses too. Tash was starting to panic as we looked through the brochure at our photographs and our comments that Kerry had so kindly made up for us. She was on countdown to her award which was the sixth award of the night not long after ours. We finished our meals and the stage lit up and Scott Mills was on the big screen, he began to start off the night telling us a little bit about childcare and what it means to him to be presenting these awards. That was it… then it went so quiet on all of the tables not just ours … there were fingers in mouths and nails being chewed people hiding behind brochures and I’m sure I saw somebody hiding under the table cloth. Come to think of it that was quite possibly Sue.
It got to our award the one that me and Sue were so certain of winning originally and now it was between us and the other girls we liked. “And the winners for the best nursery environment is….” Evolution Childcare Evolution Childcare Evolution Childcare I could hear muttering under somebody’s breath but no it wasn’t us!! It was the girls with the props, the ones with the rolled up Nursery room. We cheered for them obviously and both myself and Sue were really pleased for them as we had that gut feeling all along that it would be them. Secretly I will admit I was just a little bit jealous as I felt that we really deserved this award because our team do so much to promote and develop such fantastic environments and we would have loved to have been up on the stage showing off with Scott Mills.
A few minutes later and it was forgotten about and we were sitting with no nails left waiting to hear who had won the award for the Nursery chef. Poor Tash by this point I think had drank her body weight in wine just to calm her nerves and she could quite possibly have visited the ladies room at least every five minutes. They played the film and everybody cheered as Tash was cooking on the screen and presenting the judges with her freshly cooked meals on children’s plates might I add just like she would do in Nursery.
They announced the winner and there was a big scream and lots of jumping in the air. Yes you have guessed it Tash was the best Nursery Chef and she definitely deserved it. Nobody had time to get up on stage with her, she had legged it to get a cuddle with Scott Mills. She was so excited and the award was beautiful. When she brought it back we all had to have a sneaky picture with it, especially me and Sue… we wanted to know how it felt to hold this heavy ornament in our hands. The awards continued but because we were so excited about Tash winning I really couldn’t tell you who the other winners were.
After the awards we got to celebrate in a really big function room where everybody could enjoy themselves, relax and let their hair down. We partied right until the end, we gate crashed the photo booth and we danced the night away making the most of a wonderful night and proving that Evolution Childcare can enjoy themselves whether they win or lose. At the end of the day we are all winners and although we weren’t given an award for the best environment, it doesn’t mean we aren’t the best, we just didn’t do the best on the interview day. That’s okay though, we were in the final five out of thousands so how can anyone compete with that, and if we continue to do as well as we are doing who knows, maybe next year we will be carrying one of those gorgeous glass ornaments out of the Hilton hotel and bringing it back home to tell you all about how we did it in 2016.
