‘Impossible is Nothing’ means you can achieve anything when you are resilient and you persevere.
Every child who steps foot into our school is taught that they can be anything they want to be when they try hard, keep going and believe in themselves. At Hunslet Carr Primary School we call that belief, Impossible is Nothing. As long as they can be the best version of themselves – their city, their world, and their future is for the taking.
For our children, we base this belief on the fact that our children can see the skyline of Leeds from their classroom windows.
It is our determination that every child knows if they try hard, keep going when things get tough and believe in themselves, they can grow up to be successful in that city. Whether they have careers as accountants, lawyers, doctors or chefs, beauticians or shop assistants, as long as we embed the skills of perseverance and resilience, our children have the chance to dream big and make it happen.
For the younger children in school, we teach them to believe Impossible is Nothing using child friendly characters. These characters all live in our ‘Effort Tree’. Each morning, all of the children start as a Trying Tiger and we encourage them to climb the tree.
At the top of the tree is the Persevering Panda who is resilient, learns from their mistakes, takes pride in their work, tries their best and knows what to do when they are stuck. At the bottom of our tree is a Lazy Lion who has a fixed mindset, gives up and makes the same mistakes over and over again.
When children become a Persevering Panda, they move their face up the ‘effort tree’ and receive their own little panda to look after for the day. If they have shown Impossible is Nothing, they become a Star of the Day and spend the whole day with their class Panda.
If the whole class has shown Impossible is Nothing, they get to look after Panku, our school panda. They get to tuck him in at night, show him their fantastic work and they never forget to brush his teeth!
Now, we knew as wonderful and cute as our pandas are, they wouldn’t quite cater for our older children. So how would we inspire them to believe Impossible is Nothing?
From the very first sentence in the book, we knew this book was written for our children. Every quote from Marcus and every experience he has been through links directly to our children. It is almost as if Marcus had spent a day in our school before writing the self-help book. It is our ethos. Impossible is Nothing!
In interviews, Marcus speaks about the people he grew up with accepting their lives and the path they were on because they didn’t know any different. For him, football gave him the opportunity to experience, believe and realise that Impossible is Nothing.
While children at our school might never play for Leeds United, it is our hope that when they look back on their time at our school, they will say we gave them the opportunity to be the best version of themselves.
Marcus Rashford likes to say – Dream Big and Make It Happen. So that is what we are doing at Hunslet Carr Primary School. It is our dream to have Marcus Rashford come to our school. Our campaign is just starting so keep your eye out to see our children, staff and community prove Impossible is Nothing when Marcus Rashford comes to visit our school!
This post was written by Joanna Roberts (Key Stage 1 Assistant Headteacher at Hunslet Carr Primary School)
