30/09/2025
Oh my goodness….what a phenomenal morning!
We welcomed Zack George, aka Steel to the Steel City, and to Windmill Hill this morning. Zack, from BBC1’s Gladiators visited us to deliver his Zactiv workshop.
The whole school attended an assembly where Zack spoke about confidence, eating a balanced diet, staying hydrated and keeping active. Did you know that despite having multiple allergies and being asthmatic he still became the UK’s fittest man before going on to become a Gladiator? Zack also talked to the children about mindset - it’s not what you look like, but how you feel and we should all have confidence in ourselves and belief that we can achieve anything. He also let us into a secret….that a balanced diet is about allowing yourself the occasional treat, which for him is a Saturday night pizza.
The children practised some mindful breathing, because even Gladiators get nervous, and they practiced being confident through body language. Zack also had them giving their biggest smiles to experience how good that made them feel through something so simple. Before closing the presentation, Zack introduced us to "glimmers", those small moments of comfort and joy that that help to make us feel positive and give us hope. Each of the children were challenged to think of a glimmer from the last couple of days, write this down and add this to Zack's glimmer jar. Zack explained he uses a glimmer jar with his own family, sitting down to read through the glimmers on a regular basis and encouraged us all to do the same.
After the presentation Zack visited each classroom where he collected those glimmers for his jar, had photographs and signed photographs for every child to take home. During his classroom visits he answered every single question the children had for him from how old are you, to is Viper mean in real life and what would you be if you weren’t a gladiator to would you rather fight a duck sized tiger or a tiger sized duck?
Today’s visit was part of our commitment to fully fund a Wonderous Occasion at Windmill every year and we certainly delivered on that today. Although we fund these WOW days this would not be possible without the support and donations from our parents and carers and the individuals and businesses in our community so we would like to say a huge “thank you” to you all.
And of course, thank you to Zack, and your Zactiv sessions. Truly a memorable event for everyone today.
