Upper Primary
English as a Second Language (E2L)

After completing a degree in English, I went on to complete a Primary PGCE specialising in Early Years and Key Stage 1. Although I initially began my career teaching in EYFS in the Reception class, I have since had the opportunity to teach throughout the whole Primary spectrum from Nursery all the way up to Year 6 and I have also had extensive experience of working with students with a range of special educational needs and disabilities. I think that having a broad teaching experience is really valuable as I am able to fully understand progression in learning and to recognise next steps.

Most recently I have taught as a 1:1 Tutor, working predominantly with pupils who are being home educated. I have found working with individual pupils to be hugely rewarding and I love having the opportunity to help the students to improve their self-confidence, and to develop motivation and enthusiasm. I firmly believe that these are the main attributes which lead to successful independent learning.

When I am not teaching, I love spending time outdoors walking in the countryside or by the coast. I also enjoy swimming, keep fit and I love to travel when I am able to. I am also an avid reader and like nothing more than curling up with a good book – preferably with my cat on my knee!

I believe that being a teacher is a really privileged position and I feel so fortunate to have been able to have the opportunity to share my love of learning with so many pupils over my teaching career. I am absolutely delighted to be a Tutor at Wolsey Hall and I look forward to sharing my enthusiasm for learning with many students and their families and to support them on their learning journeys.

I am delighted to be a tutor for Wolsey Hall, supporting families and helping children reach their potential. Having been both a tutor and a Wolsey Hall parent, I believe that Wolsey Hall Oxford provides a wonderful, nurturing environment where students can thrive, and I strongly advocate for the flexibility and opportunities that homeschooling offers.

After leaving the pharmaceutical industry, I followed my heart into education, where I have been working for over 10 years, both in the UK and in British international schools in Sweden and Romania. My international school experience has given me a wonderful appreciation of cultural diversity, as well as extensive experience working with non-native English speakers within the British curriculum.

Maths, English, and Computing all build a solid foundation for students’ development. Through my teaching experience, I’ve worked with students in these subjects to build skills they can use every day: Maths encourages logical thinking and problem-solving, while English enhances communication and creativity. Computing combines these skills by applying logic through coding and developing precise, clear digital communication. I have particularly enjoyed running extra-curricular math games and coding clubs in the past and now love seeing my students’ creative computing projects, where they use various applications to develop their stories and coding skills!

Throughout my schools career, I have worked with students across the ability range, from gifted and talented learners to those with mild learning difficulties and social and emotional educational needs. At the heart of my teaching, I encourage students to embrace new challenges and maintain a positive attitude toward their learning by fostering a growth mindset. My goal is to support and challenge students through meaningful feedback that promotes their personal development.

Outside of teaching, I love spending time with family and friends and have an ever-growing list of interests: traveling, history, cultural activities, current affairs, tennis, walking, water-based activities, camping, and, most importantly, food!

Having grown up in Liverpool with most holidays spent in North Wales, I enjoy city living with nature on the doorstep. My family and I enjoy both the vibrancy and tranquility that Romania offers.

I have been working with children now for around 25 years – starting off as a voluntary leader with Girlguiding UK, progressing to a Specialist Learning Support Assistant and then training as a Primary teacher specialising in History. Over the past 15 years, I have had the opportunity to teach a whole range of ages, from three year-olds up to adults, in both state and private schools. During that time, I have also specialised in working with learners with SEN, particularly dyslexia, ADHD and ASD, including training as an Irlen Visual Stress Screener.

I absolutely love learning and am particularly drawn to History and English – so much so that I continued to study Humanities, Art History and English whilst doing my teacher training. I like to visit museums and historic towns and villages around the UK with my husband and two daughters.

When I was a student, I had the opportunity to volunteer in a museum, interviewing local people for their oral history archives. A few years ago, I also teamed up with a film-maker to record a local history walk. I am fascinated by knowing about the lives people used to lead and how this relates to us now! It is also interesting how our language has evolved and this helps tremendously when teaching English.

When I’m not teaching or visiting interesting places, I like to keep fit. I was always very active as a child and this continued through playing various sports over the years including ladies’ and mixed rugby. I am now running again. I used to run 100m/200m for a club but, this time, longer distances from 5k to training for a marathon.

I have used my expertise to teach PE and the Sports Leaders programme at both Primary and Secondary Level, and most recently qualifying as an England Athletics Run Leader. I think it’s incredibly important to balance studying and working with wellbeing and health. I am qualified as a Mental Health and Mindfulness Coach, something that I have found is essential for all learners in any educational setting.

I am excited to be sharing my skills and experience with the students at Wolsey Hall Oxford.

I did my degree in Accountancy at Exeter University, as I have always felt comfortable with numbers. They were either right or wrong and there was always a process to follow for getting something right.

After a while, that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to do something more purposeful, something which had an impact on people’s lives. I trained to become a Primary School teacher at Oxford Brookes in 2007. It was here that I found my vocation.

During my PGCE, and ever since, I have rekindled my love of learning. I found I enjoyed learning new concepts and new skills. I fell back in love with English: how one sentence can have the power to change someone’s view. I understood Science: how things can be explained while others still need explaining. I became fascinated with Computing: understanding how coding works and how to build a series of simple instructions into something beautifully complex. I fell further in love with Maths: making concrete learning become abstract. I spent hours researching and learning about History and Geography and its impact on the lives we live today. After studying French at school, I began to teach Year 6 groups in my spare time, and became the Modern Foreign Languages Co-ordinator at school.

I have also become fascinated in discovering how people learn. It’s interesting finding out how the same lesson could be received in completely different ways by two different students. I have spent many hours happily reading a variety of books on emotional wellbeing, on Psychology, on growth mindset, all to work out how to have the greatest positive impact on students.

Saying all this, nothing is better than really getting to know the student. It is the main reason I became a freelance Tutor. I enjoy talking with the student about their greatest successes and how they deal with their biggest failures. I enjoy finding out what turns them off learning, and what reignites it. I love teaching meta-cognitively; helping the student to learn about their own learning.

This love of metacognition, linked with an understanding for children to build up confidence outside of the classroom, was the reason I trained to become a Forest School Leader. In my spare time I still work as a Forest School Leader, and if not, I’ll probably still be outdoors, doing gardening or making up games with my children.

After achieving a degree in BA Combined Arts (Psychology and Sociology) at the University of Leicester in 2006, I completed my PGCE at the University of Northampton and accomplished a life long ambition, gaining QTS in 2007. Teaching has been a dream of mine ever since I used to line up my toys and take the register! Having always wanted to be a Primary school teacher, my passion and enthusiasm for the role has continued and is something I’m excited to bring to Wolsey Hall.

Throughout my career, I have taught from Years 2 – 6, which has given me a great feeling for the whole Primary learning journey. I have a particular interest in Maths and Science. Experiencing those ‘light bulb’ moments of clarity in Maths, as well as the awe and wonder of scientific discovery were the memories that I cherish the most about my own learning. Seeing similar reactions in the children I teach brings me such joy!

I have taught in two Primary schools in Buckinghamshire, been a Subject Leader for Science, and have run After School Science clubs in order to extend children’s knowledge and curiosity for the subject. Teaching Maths is a strength and I’ve always enjoyed helping children learn and apply different problem-solving techniques.

Writing stories and humorous poems has always been a passion, along with a great love of baking, cooking, and making things for family and friends. The rest of my out-of-school time is dedicated to entertaining and being with my two children.

I had considered teaching as a possible career for as long as I can remember, but it was not until my time as a University student that I seriously thought about it being my vocation. During my second year, I started a voluntary placement at a local Primary school as part of a University initiative to widen its engagement with the local community; from the start, I was hooked! Seeing teachers build their students’ confidence and nurture a love of learning was inspirational and incredibly powerful, and was something that I wanted to be a part of. After leaving University and realising that the teaching bug had not left me, I enrolled on a PGCE course with the University of Cambridge and became a qualified teacher in 2008.

Over twelve years, I worked as a Primary teacher in several urban settings; in that time, I was lucky enough to be offered a wealth of opportunities to develop my practice. I became a Mathematics Specialist Teacher in 2013 after studying with the University of Northampton for two years and this greatly developed my ability to ‘reach out’ to those pupils who struggled with the subject. Seeing that problems can be represented through pictures and that sweets – and even powder paint – can play a role in solving number problems greatly reduced their inhibitions, and gave them practical experiences that enabled them to retain new and forgotten concepts more easily. In 2015, I also became a Local Authority Key Stage Two Writing Moderator. In this role, I work with teachers from a number of schools to support and confirm their writing assessment judgements, and this has not only greatly increased my own subject knowledge but has also allowed me to ‘borrow’ many fantastic teaching ideas from other settings.

Currently, when I am not striving to inspire students in my work in schools and as a private Tutor, I enjoy walking and swimming. I like to see myself as a lifelong learner and have recently taken on the challenge of learning Italian as a beginner. I also love to travel: over the years, my wanderings have taken me to Iceland, where I worked to repair boardwalk trails in the Vatnajökull National Park, to China where I walked (part of) the Great Wall.

Since qualifying for Primary teaching in 1990 I have spent over 30 years working across the whole Primary age range with children from 4-11 years of age – and I love it! There is nothing like the buzz and satisfaction of someone loving learning and finding that they can achieve things they never thought possible, whilst all the time having fun and finding their inner confidence.

I teach the whole curriculum but my particular passion is teaching literacy skills. To establish a love of reading and writing is one of the best gifts you can give, enabling a lifetime of self-expression and the skills needed to do anything a person desires. It is this belief that led me to lead English in school for almost 20 years, spending eight years as Assistant Headteacher whilst developing a program of ‘catch up’ for those disillusioned children who have a belief that they cannot read and write.

It was the most satisfying time of my career to see children blossom into avid learners. They became successful students using the nurturing strategies of gardening, cooking and lots of talking to develop those all-important skills in English, and realised that they can achieve and learn now that they have some self-confidence.

I also enjoyed researching the best strategies for supporting students who are new to English and sharing the results of that research in a town-wide project which led to many of us learning new skills.

When I am not teaching, I enjoy the great outdoors, walking and gardening. I love any number of crafts and can usually be found sewing, silversmithing, trying new workshops – either that or engrossed in a book which I seem to get through far too quickly!

I am an enthusiastic, fully qualified primary school teacher, with over 15 years’ teaching experience. I am passionate about every child achieving their best. I qualified as a primary teacher in 2007 and have since worked in a variety of schools, across both the private and state sectors. I have taught children from ages 5 to 11 in all primary subjects and have an excellent working knowledge of the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculum. Additional roles have included: Literacy Lead, Art and Design Coordinator and Eco-Schools Coordinator.

For the last few years, I have really enjoyed tutoring children aged between 5 and 11 years in Maths and English on a 1:1 basis. As a tutor, I take time to get to know every child as an individual, working together to build confidence, independence and self-esteem. This personalised approach ensures they are equipped to make rapid progress. I feel one of my key strengths is to form strong relationships with families, in order to ensure every child achieves their full potential. I am committed to providing outstanding teaching and feedback, to enable all children to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

In my spare time, I like to explore our local beaches, paint, meditate, read and swim. Painting and the seaside have always been my passions. From a young age, I was happiest with a paintbrush in my hand, or splashing about in the sea! I am now lucky enough to live by the coast and sell my large, vibrant paintings of the area in local galleries.

I look forward to sharing my love of teaching and learning with your family.

I gained my first degree from Sheffield Hallam University, and straight after that, I moved abroad to Spain, where I taught English in a Pre-Preparatory School for several years. It was here that I discovered that children teach you just as much as you teach them because I came away fluent in Spanish, having not taken one lesson and not knowing a word before working there!

Fast forward a few years and living back in England, I married and started working for the Open University as an IT Project Manager. I took advantage of being able to study for free with them and gained a BSc (Hons) in Psychology. I am therefore fully aware of the challenges presented when you are learning from home, the pressures associated with submitting assignments and the wait for that precious feedback. It is why I always try to return assignments promptly!

Becoming a foster carer was a turning point in my life and pointed me back to my passion for teaching children. Supporting children who have had trauma in their lives to regain the joys that learning can give makes everything worthwhile. I, therefore, gained my PGCE and have now taught in a variety of Primary School settings. I particularly love how technology can bring lessons to life, and it is here again that I frequently learn just as much as I teach. I love being amazed by the combinations that a child’s imagination mixed with technology can bring; a geographical biome being created and described in Minecraft being my favourite!

I am also the literacy lead in my current school and enjoy using different texts to promote the joy of reading, and I love encouraging those budding young authors amongst us. Science is also a passion of mine; I thrive on encouraging children to ask questions on how the world works and find joy in watching them discover the answers.

As well as being a Primary School teacher and foster carer, I also keep myself busy through learning new languages; endeavouring to make my morning shuffles more into a morning jog, and writing fiction stories.

Having grown up within a family of educators I realised early on that I shared their passion and wanted to follow in their footsteps. I completed my Bachelor of Education in Ireland and since then have taught all ages across the Primary curriculum both at home in Ireland and further afield in the United Arab Emirates. I am now very excited to expand my horizons to Wolsey Hall Oxford and facilitate the learning of students around the globe.

I love the challenge of using children’s strengths and interests to improve their education outcomes and develop their skills in areas that are more challenging for them. This involves getting to know a child as an individual which is always a pleasure because it allows me to then share in their success on a deeper level. This success and progress is what I cherish about teaching and what motivates me to keep going.

I am a proactive, approachable and diligent teacher and am confident in offering a child-centred, active approach to education. It is a privilege to play a part in enabling children to reach their potential. Having taught online for the last number of months I have been inspired to continue with this learning platform. I have found that many children thrive in this environment and I am enjoying the learning curve it has created for me through this journey. It opens many doors for students whilst encouraging responsibility, organisation, and discipline. These are life-long skills which will contribute to creating life-long learners.

Outside of school I can be found swimming, reading or baking. I also like to play tennis and hike with my friends or family. I dream of travelling freely so this can also take up some time!

I was born and grew up in Kenya, and qualified as a Key Stage 2 teacher with the London School of Modern Montessori. My children were also born in Kenya and as we lived too far from any town, it became necessary for me to homeschool them. We had no electricity, so entertainment took the form of reading, resulting in a love of books for the whole family.

Homeschooling the children was a wonderful experience. Teaching them to read and write gave way later on to more structured lessons in English, Mathematics and Science. Our classroom was frequently on the beach, in the forest or in a more formal, classroom type environment in the house. By the time the children went to an English National Curriculum school in Nairobi, at the ages of 10 and 7, they were well prepared and able to adapt to normal school life very quickly. The reading ages of both were well above their chronological age by the time they went into formal schooling.

I also became a teacher in Kenton College Preparatory School in Nairobi – a member of the IAPS group of British schools around the world. I stayed there for almost 20 years, teaching a variety of Key Stage 2 classes. I left Kenya to live in England where I became a private Tutor to children who felt the need to supplement their school lessons. My students all achieved an improvement in their SATs results. I also help students working towards their 11+ exams.

My most rewarding experiences have usually been as a result of teaching. Whether in a formal, classroom setting, when a child suddenly understands something he/she found complicated, or just sharing a small piece of information with someone whose response was, “Wow, I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me.”