I am passionate about learning, education, helping others and children engage, overcome hurdles and push the boundaries of learning with technology, art and applied form of learning. I am also keen to broaden my horizons, develop myself, and create a unique personal career ladder. Below is a brief history of my learning journey, few of the reasons to explain the wrinkles on my face and what fuels my drive.
I grew up in a large cocktail of a family with quite a few siblings; being a bit competitive was a way of life. I was inspired to draw by my older brother Paul; I can remember drawing the same picture again and again until my picture was just as good as his. The drawing was of two little birds and I was seven years old, I remember showing my mum who thought my brother had done it, then I went to show my step Dad and on the way I got stung by a bumble bee, but even though the bumble bee hurt it never stopped me showing my drawing, continuing to draw and developing my art skills. As well as learning to play chess in my younger years, I would also play schools with the chess pieces; the king and queen being the teachers, pawns were the infants and the bishops, knights, rooks were the juniors, so sometimes I think my destiny was always to end up working in a primary school even though my earlier desires were in Art & Design. I also have a bit of a rare talent of being able to do the Rubik Cube which I learnt to do in my early teens as my step Dad had little bit of a business selling them and sometimes I sold them at school. I was also one of the children that use to go ‘Penny for the Guy’ which is rarely seen on the streets these days but can be found in history books. I view this with great fondness; because this is my grassroots and I had many laughs making a guy.
When I was fifteen I started working at Gateway’s; the days when you wrote your cheque out and tills were manual. Spelling was never my strength in my younger years and I can remember having to learn to spell all my numbers so I could write the cheques out, when the customer couldn’t do it which was quite often. It wasn’t long before I started working in the cash office, which was bit of trend for the next few years of jobs as well as working on a customer service desk, supervising checkouts, working on the shop floor etc.... After having my son I continued working in retail, it wasn’t until my son started primary school that I returned to studying; aiming to improve my basic skills, communications and study skills before barking on a journey into Art & Design (Access into H/E in Art & Design)my child hood passion. It was also during this time that my son started getting problems with ears and was diagnosed with Glue Ear, he also showed signs of being dyslexic and had problems with fine motor skills; this did impact on his learning at the time even though he was a bright child with high spatial skills, plus it sparked the fuel of my appetite for learning.
Following my Access course I went on to do a Higher National Diploma in Graphic Design and Advertising, specialising in Graphic Design. The fuels of learning continued to ignite and I learned more about Glue Ear and started to research Dyslexia. During my HND and my Access course as well as learning digital media, developing my art and design skills, I also studied the art movements, including surrealism and symbolism both of which I like to pull ideas from today. I had exhibitions at college and at the D/AD in London. Towards the end of my HND I got Thyroid Eye Disease, shortly after finishing the course my right eye rapidly got worse. My eye protruded out, I had severe double vision and my right eye optic nerve had become compressed. I was referred to Moorfields Eye Hospital, where I had a 3 wall decompression in my right eye and a year later had squint surgery in both eyes. While I had problems with my eyes I spent time at St Georges Hospital where student doctor’s had to try and diagnose my eye condition, learn about eye movements and different eye problems. Being at St Georges was a kindling learning drive that was just added to the fuels that were already burning.
After the success of the operations on my eyes I went on to volunteer as a Teacher Assistant in a primary school; fortunately paired up with a teacher who was a passionate Design & Technology Coordinator. The whole school rocketed with creativity during Design and Technology Week and I was given the luxurious job of designing the poster for the week allowing me to use my Graphic Design skills as well being able to dive into endless vibrant lessons. During this exciting time I got my first taste of working with SEN children, an EAL child and running an afterschool club. Furthermore the burning logs of the Occupational Therapist, helping my son with fine motor skills, the energy of secondary school SENCO discussing my son’s learning needs and targets just continued fuelling my desire into Learning and Education.
The fire of creativity and the kindling wood for learning and education continued to fuel my passion whiles working as Teacher Assistant/Learning Support Assistant as I moved on to different schools and to more challenging, street wise, multi-cultural and mixed ability children. Since working as a Teacher Assistant I have worked across KS1 and KS2 including Early Years and in a severe ASD school. I have the had the pleasure to work with a mixture of learning needs including EAL, ASD, ADHD, children who are dyslexic, blind children and the gifted and talented. I have run quite a few learning interventions for groups and one to ones, covered the class, put up displays, made props for school productions, created a flyer for an Art Exhibition, filmed and edited school productions and a head’s leaving do. In addition had many insets training days including ‘Learning Styles’, ASD, ADHD, and from the Education Psychologist Andy Bloor who I have learnt a few different strategies from over the years.
I have also planned and run two oversubscribed afterschool clubs, a chess club where children competed in county and national tournaments, Design & Technology club where children made a game and were taught Photoshop and Illustrator. I have also continued to develop my Graphic Design skills by designing my own website, which I am in the process of changing now that I have a clearer direction in which way I would like to go. Over the last few months I have become more involved in the PTA giving me a foundation for my next steps.
The Professional Practice has already helped me think of a way I could present a business with a complex concept into a simpler form. So I am excited about starting BAPP course and looking forward to exploring different topics of interest and different ways of communicating, becoming more confident in writing and gaining a degree so I can progress on to a teaching course. I plan to focus on developing and helping a PTA move forward by utilising some of my Graphic Design skills as well as elements of the Professional Practice course; raising achievements of SEN children by developing and having more understanding cognitive thinking, improving my knowledge on the different types of dyslexia and its relationship with visual learning, plus starting a new afterschool Gifted and Talented multimedia club, which will allow children to apply their talents … writing, maths, art, singing, speaking, ICT, Business etc…
