London, England, United Kingdom
I am a trade unionist and educator with 20 years’ experience working in schools and other educational settings in a variety of roles, including Teacher, Head of Year, Librarian and Careers Leader. I am currently working as an Industrial Organiser for the National Education Union’s London Region, having previously been both an experienced Workplace Rep and a District Organising Officer.
Working with the Barbican’s Creative Learning Department to review their current teacher CPD offer, researching best practice across both the arts and education sectors and running a series of focus groups with teachers and artists to inform and test new models of working, leading to an overarching departmental pedagogy for future CPD. Designing new tours of the Barbican for schools groups - collaboration with the Education, Archives and Tours departments to produce engaging age-appropriate tours exploring the history and design of the Barbican.
Involved photographing step-by-step instructions and creating written content for inclusion in the app.
Responsibility for planning, delivering and managing the school’s Careers Programme. Involved creating from scratch an annual programme of events and experiences to cater for the needs of students from Year 7 - Year 13, including organising work experience placements, mentoring schemes, in-school lessons and workshops, industry links and UCAS applications. Required a wide range of skills including planning to ensure that all of the Gatsby Benchmarks were met, communicating ideas clearly to colleagues to assist with the smooth rollout of the programme, and refining the content based on feedback from stakeholders to help improve the programme.
Responsibility for running and promoting the school library, raising its profile within the school. In addition to maintaining and updating the library stock and software, this role involved identifying and creating opportunities to promote the library and literacy across the school, working closely with other departments to make connections across the curriculum. Also involved establishing the library as the school’s cultural centre, organising events for Black History Month, International Women’s Day and LGBTQ+ Pride, and creating an annual literature festival, The Festival of Words, with events involving a wide range of visiting writers.
Established and managed the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme at the school, which had previously not taken part. Involved promoting the award within the school, working with external staff from DofE, selecting and managing participants, managing the school’s DofE online records system, recruiting and training school staff to run elements of the scheme. Also involved planning, risk-assessing and running the overnight expeditions, identifying suitable campsites, assessing the safety of routes, communicating with parents and training participants to take part safely and successfully in the expeditions.