About me

I am energetic, sporty, adaptive and I love listening and talking to people.  

When I was younger I hated school.  In one of my job interviews (which I got), my Head of Primary asked what my favourite subject at school was?  My response was, the playground.  I just didn’t get school.  How did I become a teacher and fall into this?

What was I like when I was in school?

When I was 7 years old I remember a teacher putting portable wall dividers around my desk because my concentration was so poor.  I laughed initially  and then a feeling of loneliness and what’s wrong with me came.  The following years I started to really notice that my peers were just better than me at everything, no matter how hard I tried I was still never going to get the top marks.  My teacher called me into the classroom one lunch time and said that he would give me extra help because I had something called dyslexia.  I agreed, but inside I felt I was going to miss a big part of me, the playground.

What did my parents do?

Eventually my siblings and I moved schools because my parents were worried and thought adhoc lunchtime sessions would not be sufficient to help me.  I remember sitting in extra tuition lessons at my new school to help me with my reading and writing.  I remember half way through the session, I had to wipe the hair off the table because I was pulling it out so much.  I remember this unspoken pressure that was on top of me, but I still did not get it.  However, I loved the sports that this new school provided.  I remember waking up looking outside to see if the ground wasn’t too frosty to play rugby.

Voulunteering in Nepal, 2023

An international outlook

Rugby was my first love and I carried on playing when we moved as a family to Hong Kong from the UK and then back again.  Going to school there has given me an international outlook on life, but also realised that you can live in a bubble. This effect is where your life is encased around your geographical and socioeconomic surroundings and if you don’t leave your bubble to travel, your experiences limit you to really being able to understand how others choose to live their life.  Having experienced primary  and secondary school on two different continents, I know the feeling of not understanding whats’s been said around you or cultural differences in the playground. 

From Primary to  Secondary School and beyond

From primary school I moved to secondary school.  I went to extra support classes which I found a waste of time.  All my peers were still cruising through their GCSEs and A Levels and I was still getting As for effort and Ds for my grades.  Somehow I passed my GCSEs, A Levels, my undergrad, PGCE and started a Master's in Child Psychology.  But the feelings of failure, that ‘my success was not my own’ and ‘I will always need help’ still linger.

As a teacher

In 2024, if I had myself as a teacher I would have probably given this child a label for dyslexia and ADHD.  Schools are very quick to label children for reasons of finding extra financial support or passing on the responsibility.

A student asked me once why I became a teacher and I replied saying, so that I could walk around the classroom in exams and tests.  I fell into teaching by working every moment I could in holiday camps.  I loved the energy, conversations and the activities that took part in these camps and I wanted to know what it looked like in a classroom.  

My career started in a fantastic school in the UK with a brilliant mentor.  I then moved to Spain to work in several International British schools and then back to the UK where I worked as a supply teacher across a range of schools in the South West.  Throughout this 14 year career I have covered the whole of the primary range with sprinkles of secondary. 

My approach to teaching

When I started teaching, in the back of my mind I never wanted to put any kind of pressure on students like the pressure I felt when I was a child.  Over the last 14 years of teaching my understanding of the learning process has evolved, but the question that I still ask myself that has followed me since childhood is the why.

Feeling like I’m back at school again 

Over the last few years I have had lots of reflections about education and what it means?  My childhood experiences have shaped the way I am as a teacher but also being a teacher has also affected the way of being a teacher.  With every passing year I found myself becoming more frustrated with what I was teaching and the way we (teachers) were expected to teach it.  It was like being back at school again, why was I learning this, why am I teaching this?

The future

My energy now is focused on teaching and projects that I find fulfilling.  The purpose of education is still a half answered  question and I am enjoying learning and finding out the other part of the answer.  From not being able to read, to not being able to stop reading and listening to subjects that interest me is a 180 degree turn from my childhood self.

What I can see

As a teacher I can see when children need that extra help to understand a concept or to be challenged to trust themselves with finding out the answer.  One of the biggest feelings of failure I felt is when someone told me the answer without giving me time or space to have a go.  Sometimes when I was told the answer that feeling was relief, so I did not have to  linger on the spot for too long but most of the time I felt disappointment, that yet again, not knowing the answer.