Hairdressing

Trinidy has always had an interest in working with hair, initially practicing her skills on her friends and family. “I’ve always liked working on hair, and now I’m gaining the right skills to back up my interest”.

To further develop these skills, Trinidy is also enrolled in her school’s Gateway programme and spends one morning a week working in a local hair salon, in addition to attending the Trades Academy Hairdressing programme. “I was getting a bit over school, but this way I get to stay in school but do other things like Trades and Gateway that I enjoy, while I figure out what I want to do next. It sounds complicated but it’s not. Everything fits together really well and feels like a step up.”

For Trinidy the best thing about Trades is that it’s hands-on and practical. “Our tutor Linda is really encouraging and understands how we learn best. We’re always doing something practical, rather than sitting and writing. Right now we’re learning blow-dry techniques. We’ve also done conditioning treatments and learnt how to do scalp massages. We even incorporate maths problems into our hairdressing activities so we’re learning important skills all the time.”

Astra is loving her Hairdressing course. She likes that it is very practical and she gets to learn different things from the usual subjects she learns at school. Her tutor is reassuring and always finds ways to make learning fun.

A highlight for Astra is learning how to give conditioning treatments and being able to do treatments on the other students in the class. The classmates have to really listen to each other and trust each other to do a good job of the treatment and get a great result.

The course is giving Astra the chance to see what a career in hairdressing would be like and this is helping her to make up her mind about future career opportunities.