BEd, QTS Tenzing House

Willigton Life - The journey at Willington started in September 2019 where I started out as a Year 6 Form Tutor,  taught Year 5 and 6 Maths and Year 6 Science. Year 6 parents evenings in my first year were marathon-like. Currently I am now a Year 5  form tutor, teaching Maths to all the year 5 and 6 classes and leading the subject of Maths at the school. I also help out with Games sessions on Wednesday afternoons and I sometimes assist with Oates afternoons on Thursdays. I also run a Maths Clinic for the 11+ Cycle, take the children to their golf club for their session with a PGA Pro and run a Thinking Mathematically club with Year 3 and 4 children.

Languages Spoken - My mother tongue is English with a faded South African accent mostly the result of very proper English grandparents. I remember a little Afrikaans, much less Zulu or Xhosa and a few (mostly forgotten) tourist phrases in Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, French and German. I can understand a little written Dutch, but it will make my head hurt after a while.

My First School - The first school I ever attended was Caldene in Ladysmith South Africa. My friend Andrew and I would hide the tricycles so no one else would get them before us. My mother played tennis with the Headteacher every Friday and her son Owen was one of my best friends at the time.

Childhood Memory - One of my earliest school memories is of my teacher, the lovely Mrs McLeod, banging her head against the chalkboard in frustration because I didn’t understand what I was doing in Maths. She was also one of the first people I told when I became Head of Maths. She laughed.