City College Norwich principal Corrienne Peasgood pulled on chef whites to cook dinner for staff who raised £15,000 for the student hardship fund through trekking up
mountains.
Ms Peasgood and eight other members of the college management team prepared chargrilled watermelon with crispy bacon, sirloin beef, and rhubarb crumble sorbet for 80 guests. A further seven college managers were front-of-house service waiting on the tables, supported by 14 level one and two professional cookery students.
The dinner in the college’s Debut Restaurant was a chance to thank 26 members of staff from the college for completing sponsored treks up Ben Nevis, in Scotland, Scafell Pike, in England, and Mount Snowdon, in Wales in aid of the college’s student hardship fund.
Ms Peasgood said: “It was brilliant for the college management team to go outside our comfort zone and prepare this meal.”
Has your principal, managing director, or leader got their hands dirty in the kitchen or workplace. Email the pictures into campus@feweek.co.uk to get them featured.
Picture Caption: Principal Corrienne Peasgood grilling sirloin
Greater integration of government policy on youth unemployment is among the priorities for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) as outlined in its updated manifesto, released today.
The document, out on the first day of the AELP’s two-day annual conference in London, takes stock of priorities and outlines key areas of sector debate in the run-up to next year’s general election.
It calls for increased flexibility and more joined-up working between the departments for work and pensions, education and business, innovation and skills on initiatives such as work programmes, support for troubled families, work choice, traineeships and apprenticeships.
The manifesto says: “The 1m unemployed young people must have access to the highest quality support including real work experience with real employers and success should be measured by getting them into sustainable employment.
“There are many programmes to support unemployed young people including traineeships and the youth contract. We will continue to push for more flexibility in delivery and more integration of programmes.”
Employment Minister Esther McVey and Skills Minister Matthew Hancock are expected to address the conference, at Hammersmith Novotel, today with Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne due to speak tomorrow.
Stewart Segal, AELP chief executive, (pictured) said: “As the economy begins to grow, we have to keep the focus on employment and skills.
“People with low skills need support to ensure they can be part of the drive for growth and traineeships and apprenticeships will be vital to delivering the higher skills we need to sustain that growth. Training providers will be a key part of that solution.
“Skills and employment providers engage with employers across the country on a daily basis and the AELP national conference will illustrate why we are in a position to put forward positive policy recommendations which will benefit both individuals and employers.”
The event, chaired by broadcaster and former political editor Cathy Newman, will review a number of issues such as careers information for young people, the development of traineeships and apprenticeship reforms.
Mr Segal said: “The conference is a great opportunity to hear the views of training providers and their employers about the impact of the apprenticeship changes.
“Many employers have expressed real concerns about some elements of the reforms and we hope this will be an opportunity to explore solutions. We have already recommended radical approaches which are based on giving employers real choices.”
The conference is also due to host a debate on apprenticeship reforms tomorrow when Jason Holt, of the Holts jewellery group and author of the original government review of apprenticeships, will offer his views on how reform proposals have developed.
The event is further expected to hear from Graham Stuart, chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, about ongoing concerns surrounding the quality of careers advice offered to pupils in England’s schools.
With the economy growing, the number of people in a job rose 283,000 in just the last three months – that’s the largest quarterly rise since records began in 1971.
This means there are a record 30.43m people now in work and the unemployment rate has fallen again to a new five-year low.
Youth unemployment, excluding those in full-time education, is also now at its lowest level since 2008.
We are also seeing business confidence growing, with employers up and down the country hiring again, and who tell us there are jobs out there.
Each and every person who has made a new start or hired someone new is helping make Britain a more prosperous and confident place to be — and as Employment Minister I am committed to making sure everyone has the opportunity to share in the recovery.
With vacancies growing we need to ensure people have the skills and experience that employers are looking for as they expand and take on more staff.
That is why through our network of Jobcentres we have already made more than half a million referrals for training.
Using the expertise of colleges and other private providers we are helping people with things like basic skills and occupational training to ensure they get the skills they need to compete in today’s job market.
We have hugely increased the amount of work experience and employer-led work academies
And almost 150,000 of those referrals were for young people, which is a major priority of mine.
Only through working together — Jobcentres, employers, local authorities, charities, colleges and independent learning providers — will we continue to equip young people to successfully move from education into the world of work.
That is why we have hugely increased the amount of work experience and employer-led work academies available to ensure young people have the right skills for modern workplaces.
We have also been working closely with my colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to introduce traineeships to help young people aged 16 to 23 develop the skills and vital experience they need to secure apprenticeships and other sustainable jobs.
More than 500 training organisations have indicated that they would deliver traineeships in 2013/14 with many employers already on board.
New approaches such as Social Impact Bonds, including the successful Innovation Fund and the upcoming Youth Engagement Fund, provide an innovative new way to engage, among others, charities, communities and business to fund solutions to complex social problems.
The Think Forward programme is one of ten social impact bonds around the country to be funded through the Innovation Fund. Think Forward is delivered by charity Tomorrow’s People who have placed ten highly trained coaches in East London schools where they identify and support 14 to 16-year-olds at risk of becoming not in education, employment or training.
We are also looking at new ways tohelp young people not in education, employment or training through Jobcentre Plus, in partnership with local
authorities.
Our trained work coaches will help young people navigate the wide array of services on offer and tap into local employment and training opportunities. Jobcentre work coaches have a huge amount of expertise, experience and local labour market knowledge, and we want to use that to help young people get their foot in the door to the career they want.
So as the economy continues to grow and businesses continue to take on more staff, we will do everything we can to ensure people — especially young people — are best equipped to take advantage of the recovery.
The annual conference of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers takes place on Monday, June 2 and on Tuesday at Hammersmith’s Novotel London West.
Among the scheduled speakers on day one is Employment Minister Esther McVey, and on day two is Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne.
Somerset sixth form college governors’ chair has been made a National Leader of Governance.
Guy Adams was given the two-year role with the National College for Teaching and Leadership, which is an executive agency of the Department for Education, in honour of his work at the Ofsted grade one-rated Richard Huish College.
He has been chair of the college corporation for eight years having also been a student there.
Mr Adams, a solicitor, director of two companies and manager of a property development and letting business, said: “I am looking forward to having the opportunity to improve governance in the schools, colleges and academies, and sharing the outstanding practice that we have developed at the college.”
Principal John Abbott said: “It is fantastic for us that we have Guy at the helm of our corporation and I congratulate him on his achievement. Schools and colleges that work with him in the future will be lucky to benefit from his leadership and experience as we have.”
Meanwhile, Bradford College has announced that its new group chief executive will be Andy Welsh.
Chemistry graduate Mr Welsh, who has completed an MBA at the University of Leeds, is currently the Bradford College Group chief operating officer.
He steps up to group chief executive following April’s announcement that Basingstoke College of Technology principal Anthony Bravo would be taking up the role.
However, Mr Bravo, who was recently involved in a Twitter row when he retweeted a post in which BBC presenter Jeremy Clarkson was described as a “c***”, pulled out of the move the following month citing distance and “potential impact on my family” as the reasons for his decision.
Mr Welsh will replace the retiring Michelle Sutton as group chief executive, while Kathryn Oldale will remain as college principal.
And a college spokesperson said Mr Welsh had the “enthusiastic support of the corporation in working with the executive team to build on the excellent reputation of the college and to further develop the performance and profile of the Bradford College Group”.
Mr Welsh, who began his career in personnel at Leeds City Council before moving to Joseph Priestley College where he rose to HR director and then director of resources, is due to take up the appointment in August this year.
He said: “I am very excited. The college and group both have a fantastic future ahead of them. We all have a part to play in ensuring we maximise our chances of success, so that we confirm our well-earned status of being a leading light and driving force in the sector.”
The workplace remains subject to male dominance and as such, says Carol Taylor, there is need for a space for female leaders to share ideas where they are in the greater number.
More than 100 delegates went to the Women’s Leadership Network (WLN) annual conference, in London, run in partnership with College Leadership Services.
While not aimed solely at women leaders and aspiring leaders, delegates were overwhelmingly female.
Is there a need for a space where women who are in, or who aspire to, leadership can come together? Are there strategies that women need to learn? Are there decisions that women face that men usually don’t face? Is there really a level playing field with no glass ceiling?
It was interesting how the conversations changed over the day — early comments like “I was very annoyed my boss sent me on this….why would I want to go to a leadership conference only for women?” became: “It’s great to have a chance to hear how successful women lead”.
The change of atmosphere was palpable as the day went on — women expressing how good it felt to be in the majority, those who began to feel more relaxed about issues such as career choice, managing meetings, handling leadership. It was clear, for example, that [National Union of Students president] Toni Pearce’s excellent session on lad culture would have had a very different tone with fewer women’s voices.
For me there is a specific need for spaces where aspiring women leaders can come together to share tactics, think about their development needs, and talk to successful women leaders.
No one can seriously doubt the male hegemony, which leads to men appointing men to posts where leadership qualities are required, thus reinforcing the cycle. This is not to say that there aren’t many supportive, open and aware men in senior positions out there, but just to say that there aren’t nearly enough.
No one can seriously doubt the male hegemony, which leads to men appointing men to posts where leadership qualities are required, thus reinforcing the cycle
While we no longer get interview questions such as “What will you do when the kids are ill?”, women are still subject to subtle ways in which they are either undermined or expected to perform in a certain way.
Take, as a very obvious example, the images used in publications and periodicals, which are overwhelmingly white and male. Take the language used to describe women, ‘bossy’ being one of only a number of gender-specific words used as subtle put-downs.
Delegates at the conference, which took place on May 21, were treated to a keynote from Sophia Swire who, among other things, stood up to drugs warlords, set up more than 250 primary schools in Afghanistan.
Her lively speech took us through how she had used networks, persistence and sheer bloody mindedness to change lives and raise aspirations, especially for girls and women. This set the tone for the rest of the conference, which was — you can do most things if you set your mind to it.
The closing speech of WLN chair Sally Dicketts was forthright and pertinent, developing the theme of role models for young men and women in colleges, at all levels, and about the need for us, men and women, to challenge wherever we need to.
She finished by saying that for her, leadership was about kindness — yes, we had to be tough and forthright, strategic thinkers and responsive managers, but above all, we should be kind.
We must have leaders in the FE sector who represent the range of people we work with, the people we want to attract.
We must recognise and value a range of leadership styles. We have to enable women to make choices about whether they want to aim for leadership positions, whether that is as a governor or a chef executive of a
charity, whether it’s as a principal of a college or curriculum leader. It’s up to all of us to make this happen, and the thriving WLN is one place where something is being done.
Carol Taylor, deputy chief executive, development and research, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace)
With the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) having recently launched the first new FE teaching standards in seven years, Andrew Morris looks at how they have been received and how they might best be embedded.
It is just as important to create the right conditions for teachers to learn as it is for their students — and new professional standards published by the ETF promise to give us the opportunity to achieve this.
Moreover, the standards should ensure that teachers and their institutions are very much in control of their own destiny.
The standards were launched at the LSRN workshop in London last month. The event brought together teachers, leaders, researchers, unions and the main sector bodies to consider professionalism and the new standards.
Tricia Odell from the ETF explained how the standards were developed in close consultation with the sector and by looking at the way standards operate in other professions.
Three vital areas are covered: values and attributes, knowledge and understanding and professional skills.
Small-scale studies at classroom level are crucial in adapting teaching approaches for particular learner groups and stimulating innovation
The standards are intended to set clear expectations of effective practice and enable teachers and trainers to identify areas for their own professional development as well as to inform teacher education.
The key message from expert discussion groups at the workshop was around creating the right conditions for teachers to learn.
We know that teacher professionalism is best developed through engaging with evidence in a safe and supportive environment.
As Sally Dicketts, chief executive of Activate Learning, a group of providers in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, put it: “Brain studies tell us it takes 10 years to become an expert, so we need to be kind to one another, to create good emotional environments for teachers to learn in, not fight-or-flight ones.”
Much is left open for organisations to interpret, so it is important that “the whole sector takes ownership of the standards” said John Lea, programme director for post-graduate teaching and learning at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Research evidence shows the importance of collaboration in professional development.
It’s not just an individual pursuit; communities of practice in which teachers, trainers and researchers work together to interpret public evidence and engage in systematic enquiries of their own, are proving effective.
Maggie Gregson, director of the Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (SUNCETT) at the University of Sunderland, called for joint practice development — “an approach that takes account of existing practice and balances research evidence with local insight”.
How should providers respond to the new standards? Clear demand from all sides at the launch event was for two things.
First, people throughout the sector must be made aware of the standards and the opportunity they present for creating a sense of professional identity. Second, it is essential the profession takes ownership and control, rather than allowing other powerful forces to act on its behalf.
The workshop called for several parallel efforts to raise awareness of the standards.
A bottom-up approach through practitioner networks and organisations would have the greatest effect. For the speediest response a top-down approach via national representative bodies and leadership teams is required. For the widest take-up a sideways approach works best through peer-to-peer dialogue at the local level. All are needed.
A sector that prides itself on the rich diversity of its provision is well-placed to understand the diversity of evidence needed to support practice.
Small-scale studies at classroom level are crucial in adapting teaching approaches for particular learner groups and stimulating innovation.
Qualitative accounts that offer powerful stories and quantitative studies that provide data and track trends are both needed. So too are larger scale studies that attempt to measure effectiveness rigorously across a range of contexts.
The plea from the workshop is for an inclusive approach that galvanises the teachers and trainers, the academics, the unions and professional associations and national organisations in a combined effort to develop a self–determined professional culture in which collaboration and the use of evidence become the norm.
Let this be the rallying point for a sector that shakes off its deference to others and shapes its own concept of professional standards and use of evidence.
Andrew Morris, member of the Learning and Skills Research Network planning group and a member of the Policy Consortium
The AELP does a remarkable job of bringing together an otherwise disparate group of providers.
It has created unity and delivered joined-up thinking in a sector that’s been battered and broken over the last few years — a sector that has been completely deprived of anything close to a long-term strategy from this government.
At their best, properly resourced and given room for long-term manoeuvre, those represented by the AELP are key to unlocking a bigger, better skilled economy, where the jobs are well paid and inequality is down.
How is this so? It’s simple. A successful economy requires a number of things, but above all else, it needs clear pathways to high level skills and for any skills gaps to be addressed.
The latter poses a serious problem for our nation — between 2011 and 2013, the number of job vacancies without qualified applicants in Britain rose from 91,000 to 146,000.
To address this, we must do two things. First off, it’s imperative that we encourage investment in training by employers, especially given the fact that such spending has fallen by £2.4bn since 2011.
Apprenticeships are often stuck in a rut and this exacerbates the harmful public perception that they’re a poor cousin to university degrees
According to the Social Market Foundation, in-work training that leads to a nationally recognized qualification gives a 10 per cent earning premium to employees, coupled with increased productivity and a reduced demand on tax credits.
Secondly, we need to transform the numbers embarking on a vocational path to higher level skills.
The last Labour government’s target of getting 50 per cent of young people into university was right and good, but now it’s time to focus on those who do not go to university — those who may not be academic in nature and who have been failed by a regressive Tory education policy.
These are the people who need apprenticeships, traineeships and opportunities to up-skill themselves in existing employment. It is not, however, simply about churning people through the system — the provision on offer has to be of the highest standard.
Let’s take apprenticeships for example. Under the Tories, apprenticeship starts have grown exponentially. We’ve seen the numbers rise from 457,200 in 2010/11 to 510,200 in 2013/14. On an Excel spreadsheet, these figures look delightful and the team at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills may well feel they have reason to celebrate.
Not quite.
Lift the lid, and you’ll find that of the 510,200 apprenticeship starts last year, just 9,800 of these were higher apprenticeships, ie those which lead to a level five or above qualification. That means a mere 1.92 per cent of those starting apprenticeships last year could reach anything near a degree-level qualification through their current training.
Learners are being failed by the government’s craving for numbers.
A German apprenticeship, typically lasting three years, involves at least one day a-week of classroom teaching and is rigorously assessed. This is replicated by only a few English apprenticeships — Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls Royce for example — but for the rest, there is no sense of ‘elevation’.
Apprenticeships are often stuck in a rut and this exacerbates the harmful public perception that they’re a poor cousin to university degrees.
Employers have spoken to me at length about their desires to create a loyal and skilled workforce, identifying apprenticeships and training as key to this. And, of course, those represented by the AELP – many of whom I look forward to meeting at the conference – are ready and rearing to provide the high quality training that will open the door to a better skilled, brighter Britain.
The annual conference of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers takes place on Monday, June 2 and on Tuesday at Hammersmith’s Novotel London West.
Among the scheduled speakers on day one is Employment Minister Esther McVey, and on day two is Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne.
The newly-announced apprenticeship funding system in which employers will contribute 33 per cent of the cash has been described by Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Stewart Segal as “no simple system”.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) had described the employer-led pilot model for the first Trailblazers’ group — made up of employers and professional bodies in eight sectors including aerospace and electrotechnical — as “simple”.
But Mr Segal said its “variables are quite numerous”.
Delivering a webinar on the reforms on Thursday (May 29), he said: “You can summarise it in a clear table, and yes, what we’re moving from is a payment for every individual framework qualification to an overall payment, an averaging payment, but it’s the combination of all those different elements which means it’s still very difficult to know how much you’re going to get for each apprentice.”
He added: “This is no simple system. The variables are quite numerous.”
Meanwhile, other sector groups have welcomed the new system, but conceded the trial run would be a learning curve.
Teresa Frith, senior skills policy manager for the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “There is currently no cost to employers for 16 to 18-year-olds, but the new government one-off payment shows they recognise that employers may need to invest in additional training for young apprentices.
“It is important to remember that this is a trial and it is difficult to predict how employers will respond at this early stage. We must learn as much as we can from this trial to make sure that when the funding changes are rolled out across the whole range of apprenticeships, they benefit both the employer and the apprentice.”
Employer-led apprenticeship reform has been a key theme of Skills Minister Matthew Hancock’s time in office, and he has previously said he wants it to “become the norm for young people to go into an apprenticeship or go to university or do both in the case of higher apprenticeships”.
A technical consultation on funding reforms that ended on May 1 attracted more than 1,200 responses.
“The results and next steps will be announced in the autumn,” said a BIS spokesperson.
John Allan, Federation of Small Businesses national chairman, said: “We welcome the move to create an apprenticeship system that puts employers in the driving seat. However, as BIS research has found, there is a risk that setting the employers’ contribution too high will put some businesses off hiring an apprentice.
“A reformed apprenticeship system should be simple, easy to navigate and the phasing of payments and grants must be designed in a way that does not harm cash flow.
“While we welcome the proposed additional grant for small businesses, getting the design of the system right is crucial and it must avoid unnecessary administrative burdens.
“This is critical to maintaining and, hopefully, increasing the number of small firms that take on apprentices.”
Looking out onto the beautiful rolling hills of the Cotswolds, it’s hard to imagine a greater draw to working at the National Star College.
But after a career dedicated almost exclusively to the education of young people with special educational needs, it is clear that the natural beauty of the college’s Gloucestershire setting came second in the mind of Kathryn Rudd when as she said ‘yes’ to a job at this unique institution.
Rudd, aged 42, has headed the specialist further education college, which provides training and personal development for young people with complex
Kathryn, aged 6, dressed as an angel
physical disabilities, for four years and is also chair of the Association of National Specialist Colleges (NATSPEC).
Her passion and enthusiasm for specialist education is obvious from the start of our conversation.
She tells me that once she started working with young people who needed extra support, initially at Park Lane general FE college in Leeds, she never looked back.
“I could see the opportunities for these young people,” she says, “and in many of the places that I have worked, the opportunities weren’t there for them — it was just too painful not to work with that group of young people because there was so much progress they could make and so many opportunities for them, and yet they weren’t getting it.
My intention was to stay a year and get some experience… 14 years later you can see I never found a trapdoor
“And yet, at that time, young people with disabilities usually came in by a separate entrance in the college, and they were taught in a separate annexe, and they had separate breaks. This was the 1990s, and I always remember being told by somebody, ‘could you go and get one of your students?’
“This is what really annoys me about the whole ‘everybody must be included’ — well actually, those young people were, allegedly, included. But there was
Kathryn Rudd with students Jasper Farrow-Jones Cumming, aged 20, and Katie Derham, 20
no inclusion — in reality, they were a segregated part of an FE college.”
An only child born in Coventry in 1971, Rudd enjoyed being part of her community and loved reading. When she was 11, her family moved to Kenilworth, where she went to a “posh” comprehensive. She described the whole experience as a “culture change”.
“It was actually my first understanding about how young people who find it difficult at school got taught,” she says.
“Because one of the things we hadn’t done at my previous school was French, and all the kids in my new school had been learning French for years, so of course I went in, and instead of being in the top set, which I was fairly used to, I was in the bottom set.
“We were supposed to be doing French, but actually all we did was colour in triangles. I thought, ‘this is just dire’, and that’s driven me since that point, that if you don’t fit into that norm, if you don’t fit into the right place in school, you don’t get the right provision for you because people say you’re either in that box or we’re not actually going to bother with you.”
Rudd, who was awarded the OBE in April for services to FE for young adults with learning difficulties, studied English literature at the University of Leeds, hoping to become a journalist. But the closest she came to life in a newsroom was a job selling media space in the Yorkshire Post. Her move into the world of education happened, she says, by accident, with a job at what was then Park Lane College.
“It was wonderful,” she says. “I worked with young people with learning difficulties initially, and it was just fantastic, seeing the skills of the tutors there in terms of enabling them to progress and how they were achieving, and the value that was placed on them.”
Kathryn with her OBE
An emerging desire to teach took Rudd back to Leeds University for a Master’s Degree in special educational needs teaching, and she ended up as school links co-ordinator at Park Lane before applying for a job at Warrington Collegiate, a job which presented her with a big challenge — the dreaded driving test.
“I had tried to drive when I was 17 and it was the world’s worst thing, and I hadn’t ever gone back into it, says Rudd. I had a weekend’s worth of driving, passed my test on the Monday morning, and drove the M62 between Leeds and Warrington in the afternoon. I thought, ‘nothing will ever scare you again’.”
In 2000, after five years in Warrington, Rudd saw an advert for an “interesting” job at National Star College, in Ullenwood, near Cheltenham. But she thought her chances were limited when she arrived late for her first appointment.
“I was three quarters of an hour late for my interview here because I got myself hopelessly lost,” she admits. “This was so far south for me that I needed a passport. I had no idea of where it was. I ended up in Oxford, rang my dad and said, ‘where is Cheltenham in relation to Oxford?’ He said, ‘get driving, fast’.
Young people with disabilities usually came in by a separate entrance in the college, and they were taught in a separate annexe, and they had separate breaks. This was the 1990s
“I remember coming in, and it’s always the way, isn’t it, when you think you’ve blown an interview, and you get quite blasé, and it’s all right, and the interview went fine.
“They didn’t offer me the job I went for, they offered me another job running the therapy teams and supporting the therapy teams, and looking at funding and recruitment. And my intention was to stay a year and get some experience — so 14 years later, you can see I never found a trapdoor.”
Kathryn skiing in Bulgaria
In her 14 years at the college, Rudd has held “every post with principal in it” and eventually rose to the top job in 2010. She has chaired NATSPEC for two years and the insight she has gained as part of the organisation seems to have created a fair number of misgivings about policy, and in particular, the “postcode lottery” for learners with special educational needs.
She says: “Because the funding has been devolved to local authorities, we work with 56 different local authorities, so it’s an absolute postcode lottery.
“Because what one local authority is doing is totally different to another one, so depending on where you sit depends on what provision you get, and I don’t believe that that’s fundamentally right. I think that it is destroying, as I said before, the choice and aspiration of young people.
“I think there is a huge lack of independent information, advice and guidance, which is having a really detrimental effect across the sector, and I think that young people’s options are being limited by the agenda of ‘you can only go to your local college’, whether it meets your needs — or ‘whether it can achieve your aspirations’ is probably the better terminology — but that is a very real
issue.”
But life in Cheltenham is good for Rudd.
“I live near the racecourse,” she says. “I have an ever-suffering partner called Mark and a very miserable Collie called Tilly in my life. She has the typical Collie look — ‘They beat me and lock me in rooms when you’re not here’. She does that a lot.”
But she’s hoping to put smiles on faces having agreed to take part in a Strictly
Come Dancing-style competition aimed at raising money for the National Star charity.
“This is a whole new area of comfort and pain for me,” she says. “We have been paired with our unfortunate partners, and we have got until September 20 to learn how to jive, jitter and lindy hop.”
