Lathallan pupil and guest blogger Joe Barry (S4) has been conducting a series of “interviews” with Lathallan School teachers so you can better get to know our team behind the scenes.
Recently, I interviewed Mr Fernandez, a member of staff that does a huge amount beyond teaching Business Management and Computing classes. I spoke with him about his roles at Lathallan and his hobbies outside of school.
“I am head of the Business Management and the Computing Science departments. I teach senior pupils from S3-6. I teach the business course up to the Advanced Higher level and I also run the National Progression Award. This is an enterprise related award. I teach Computing Science to National Five and Higher, we haven’t yet had anybody take this to Advanced Higher level. That’s the teaching side.”
“I’m also the Careers Advisor for the school. I process all the applications for university and support pupils as they apply for college every year. I help them with their personal statements and UCAS applications.”
“You may have also heard about the Youth Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) that I manage. I could talk endlessly about the benefits of this and the skills that pupils harness while going through this programme.”
“I am also a parent, and Vice Chair of the Lathallan Parent’s Association.”
The Youth Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) is a scheme that is run by The Wood Foundation and designed for students to select a charity that they believe in and pitch to win money for that particular cause. I was keen to know more about YPI and who better to ask than Mr Fernandez.
“I believe philanthropy is very important for everybody to consider and do whatever they can to help those who are less fortunate. It’s not difficult and doesn’t always have to be financial support as charities can benefit from you giving of your time and effort. It’s always been meaningful to me and I’ve been connected with various charities for a long time.”
“We established the YPI programme in my second year at Lathallan, and we’ve run that on an annual basis with S3 pupils for eight years. It started off as a small affair in a classroom and this has evolved over time to involve the whole of the Senior School. COVID-19 posed a number of challenges but I believe we were the first school in Scotland to run it as a virtual event streaming to all classes at Brotherton Castle. So a whole bunch of pupils have raised money for charities and have won huge amounts of money for their charity of choice as a result of the research they conduct and the presentation they share to a panel of judges.”
“I supported a National Five business class to set-up Piper’s Coffee Shop at school and through this we’ve raised £25,000+ for charity over the last eight years. Pupils have the opportunity to take barista coffee training and visitors have enjoyed their hot drinks alongside delicious cakes that our parents bake.”
You’ll be getting a good sense of Mr Fernandez’s energy as you read about his range of work at Lathallan but I wanted to know a little more of what he does outside of school.
“Most people quickly discover that my main interest is music and I play bass in a blues band called Georgia Crawl. Before that, I was playing rhythm guitar in an AC/DC cover band. But the main thing behind all that is that I am a singer songwriter. I’ve released six instrumental albums and one vocal album, which I co wrote with a friend in Switzerland. In the past I’ve been commissioned to write music for a TV advert and as a result I was on radio shows, featured in magazines and newspapers.”
“I was encouraged to record my album by a guitarist called Anthony Curtis. He won the Billboard Charts in the States with his band, Boom for jazz fusion. I managed to get my first album to The Scorpions, my favourite band, and as a result I got to meet them and then they played my album to the audience before they went on stage. That was a real highlight. I became the first ever Western expat to release an album in Qatar. Posters promoting my album were in all the CD stores in the country.”
This really illustrates the passion drive that Mr Fernandez has. He brings this burning flame to school and helps pupils to do utterly amazing things. He’s a fountain of ideas at school. For example, who would have guessed that an idea in one if his classes would lead to a school coffee shop being set up and making thousands of pounds for charity?
I will leave you on this note. Mr Fernandez is part of the integral glue that binds the students and the staff, he is one of the masterminds behind the machine of Lathallan and his ideas are what help make it one of a kind.