I have been wanting to create a blog for quite some time now but never really mustered the courage to do it. So why now?

I suppose the timing has something to do with fighting the ‘imposter syndrome’ that I have been battling with for a while. Not to mention the fact that I just spent a solid 40 minutes desperately trying to locate a picture of me with a mask on to exemplify this – for someone who loves a good excuse to dress up this was a surprisingly difficult task, this was the closest I could get…

But, all jokes aside, here I am sharing my experience of education and my journey through the leadership lens. A safari through the looking glass of a Scouser, well out of her comfort zone, in the far off distant lands of Yorkshire where hills are an actual thing and not just a part of your driving test, where a bun is a cake and apparently ‘lolly-ice’ is not the right way round.

What I have/want to say might not be up your tree or tickle your fancy but I hope that it reads as a genuine representation of my thoughts and journey as I go through the school system, in awe and inspired by my colleagues and students.

Why Am I Here and What Am I Doing?

Don’t worry I am not trying to tackle life’s big existential questions, I am just going to give you a little insight into how I ended up in Yorkshire and what my current school position is.

So, prior to teaching I was actually a TA in a Liverpool school where I had the absolute pleasure of working with a Maths department who genuinely invested in my professional development and cared about my future. It was thanks to the wonderful people at this school that I decided to bite the bullet and actually apply to become a teacher.

Skip to ‘five-minute planning’ and the joys of putting together my PDP at two in the morning, and I was completing my training in two very different schools. Although I absolutely fell in love with my first placement I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to experience something entirely different, somewhere entirely different.

So for my first ever teaching post I ended up in Yorkshire with a team who I couldn’t be more grateful for. This was a team where we were openly encouraged to share our ‘opps’ moments as well as our wins – there is something profoundly encouraging to know that it’s okay to make mistakes.

I then had the privilege of moving to my current school, with a phenomenal group of people who, like my Maths department in Liverpool, truly believe in everyone’s professional development and care deeply about the community we serve. It is here where my leadership journey really began as Assistant Curriculum Leader in English, where I was challenged to tackle and broaden the diet our students were getting and reform how we approached behaviour management. Evaluating Schemes of Learning across the school then became my baby – I was trusted to train staff on my initiative and quality assure the diet we were giving our students.

Now, here we are at the end of the 2018-2019 academic year and I have held the role of Pupil Premium Leader for a year as well as continued my work on SoLs across the school. I am so ridiculously grateful to everyone who helped get me this far and I am excited for the year to come.

Bring on September.