Baptism of fire was the phrase coined. I was bullied as an NQT – I have written about the importance of kindness in What They Didn’t Teach Me On My PGCE, as this was where my strength came from to get through the first three years of my career.

End of my third year, I had a TLR for Pupil Voice and Art and was ready for progression. 4 more schools later, I am currently on secondment as an Assistant Principal as a way to enable me to further progress. I am in the privileged position to be able to enable even more children and a larger staff team.

Throughout my career (which is coming up to 11 years now), kindness and nurture are the two the strengths I have ensured define me as a class teacher and now as a leader.

In April 2018, I joined the Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust and became English Leader of the first primary school that joined the Trust. In 2019, the school was ranked the best for progress and improvement in the local area because of our Reading results, under my leadership of the subject. During this time, I have developed many English threads that have been translated across the Trust. Now in 2021, I have enabled the development of writing, reading and early reading across three primaries in the trust and am translating the success of the first school to the biggest primary setting of the trust. A real privilege.

As my passion and expertise has strengthened over time, I have been fortunate to become a Regional Leader of WomenEd (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NnJwonhdL_74IVTlj317JeOaXtn72xbZ/view?usp=sharing), a reviewer of books for Just Imagine and Tiny Owl Publishers. I have spoken at many edu-events, including OUP events, sharing reading practise and pedagogy.