Debbie

I have worked on a daily basis with children who have ASD, ADD, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, PDA (pathological demand avoidance), language and communication needs, processing disorders and so on within my classroom over the last 30 years. As a result of working with these children, I have worked with a variety of internal and external professionals both within the school’s special needs and base communications departments and outside professionals who come in to work with individuals and give training to teachers on disorders which may be very specific to the child. As a result I have been able to develop ways of working with children who do not process in the same way that most people do and I have learnt to celebrate these differences and appreciate that we are all equal, just not the same. I commit to making it my duty to access appropriate resources and training for the students in my care. Additionally, I have been increasingly met with students who have crippling anxiety which almost inevitably leads to other, much more complex issues and these children have become my central focus over the years. I have first hand experience within my own family of emetaphobia, a crippling phobia which triggers anxiety leading to periods of disordered eating or refusal to eat, fear of food, fear of going anywhere there may be food in case anyone else eating it may be sick and periods of self hatred and hopelessness. This leads to periods of agoraphobia and an inability to spend time with friends and it is extremely hard watching young people that you care about suffering; it leaves you with a terrible sense of helplessness. On bad days, a child suffering from anxiety or stress may not even be able to get out of bed, let alone face the challenges of getting to school and then having to face the stresses of the day. So, I decided I would do everything I could to empower myself to help. Whilst in school, I tapped into the expertise of the SENCO and Head of Base Communications Unit and learnt about how to best deal with the anxieties I was seeing in children every day. I learnt that you can’t simply fix anxiety or any other SEMH issues and that our role is to make connections, build relationships, model healthy attitudes and behaviours and do our best to help young people find a way through.

My specialist experience working with students with SEN and learning needs to develop trusting and meaningful relationships: Before a practitioner can work with any student, it is imperative to build trust and develop a relationship where they feel safe. As I mention elsewhere, I worked with, and still do, one student every week for a year before he felt able to speak to me. It progressed to greetings and now it has become fully blown debates. I was determined that I would never quit and it has paid off. I truly believe that trust is imperative for all students but with SEN students, they have often suffered trauma and developed a sense of inadequacy and failure in their learning and we need to overcome this by building confidence through the creation of a safe environment and a focus on enjoying the sessions and with that comfort, learning will take place. This requires a degree of giving yourself in order to expect the student to give anything back and mutual respect and trust is the foundation of all healthy relationships. I also believe that a great way of building a relationship is to allow students to learn through things that interest them and all skills can be adapted to almost any medium. My motto is “whatever it takes” (within reason!).

My skills and experience in teaching young people with SEMH and anxiety: I have observed SEMH and SEBD issues more and more in education and I feel that the pressure on our teenagers is so vast now that for many (as opposed to some) children, it is simply overwhelming and they cannot cope. This manifests itself in so many different and, sometimes, unpredictable ways which we can never predict and sometimes we may look and think that something may seem a bit silly but these anxieties are not silly, they are crippling and life controlling for the young people who have to suffer them. I have now left mainstream education in order to work with children who are suffering so badly that often, they are not even able to attend school. In addition to phobias and eating disorders, I have worked with children with crippling exam stress, body dysmorphia, addiction, criminality and victims of bullying, particularly cyber-bullying, and every single experience is individual and unique to the sufferer. I left mainstream education in December 2019 because I decided that I wanted to focus on these children, the ones who were struggling on, often silently, and often not being able to cope. Having also had two children who were unable to negotiate the school system successfully themselves for very different reasons, I really understood how real it is not only for the children but also for the family who often need support and reassurance too. From first hand experience, this is a terribly scary place in itself but even more so for parents who simply don’t even know where to start looking for help. I am committed to supporting children with all walks of special educational needs and I aim to make life (and lessons) a bit more navigable and therefore just a bit easier for them.

Additionally, as someone who has suffered from mental health illness in the past both myself and in my children, I am fully conscious and empathetic towards the overwhelming impact it can have on life. But we can learn to live with anxiety and our mental health issues which may seem like a defeatist attitude but by learning to accept the illness and work despite it, we can become more resilient and able to cope with the stresses that life will inevitably bring everyone. I have seen many young people crippled with anxiety which range from exam stress and pressure to much more personal anxieties and each of these is as damaging as the rest.

I have seen emetaphobia (phobia of vomiting), eating disorders, addiction, anxiety, self-harm, depression and other anxieties and disorders that can stem from the smallest thing and become life controlling and I see it as my duty of care to do everything I can to support and where I don’t have the resources needed to do this, I am committed to finding the person who is. Safeguarding is always at the centre of what we do. There are many ways of reaching young people with mental health needs and they are all based on that person’s terms. Mental health is so unique to every person suffering it and whilst one person with emetaphobia may be scared of food, another may suffer terrible OCD from handwashing and it is up to me, as the teacher, to find a way of connecting with that young person and going back to what I earlier referred to and that is that by building a relationship of respect, you have the key to helping that young person unlock their needs. It is then imperative to build a positive working environment around their interests and then it is possible to start to build in some general teaching and develop from there.

I try to work on the basis that if mental illness of any kind is part of our lives, we have to learn to live with it and control it, in other words build a resilience against it. The result is that the young person is learning life skills which will benefit them every bit as much in the future as it does at that point when they really need it. I am committed to providing empathetic and caring support for students with mental health needs. My skills and experience developing trusting relationships with students with SEN including speech/ communication needs, PDA, autism, anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia: I fully believe that developing trusting relationships with students is the key to being able to support them. This is true of all people, not only those with SEN and I endeavour to create a relationship with a student initially by engaging with them on a very general and conversational tone and finding out all of the things they enjoy doing and what hobbies they have and then actually sharing some of this information about myself too.

Whilst it is imperative to always maintain a professional distance and be a positive role model, it is also important for the child to accept you as a person rather than just a figure of authority or someone who is going to make them do something that they really struggle with doing and ultimately, do not want to do. By being able to start building the foundation of a relationship on this informal level it is possible to develop it to a point where there is a mutual respect. Once young people feel comfortable around you, they start feeling comfortable to start at least “giving it a go”, trusting that you won’t laugh at them or tell them that they are wrong. There is no wrong if you’ve really tried, there’s just not quite getting the idea yet. For many young people, including both of my own children who are now 17 and 21, school can be a difficult place to navigate and learning subjects which may not be from choice to start with can cause what can seem to be insurmountable problems. having built good relationships with my students and working on increasing their confidence and self-esteem, they are then better equipped to be able to tackle these subjects with more positivity and an acceptance that they can fail in a secure environment in order to learn how to build on those mistakes and turn them into success, whatever that looks like for them.

Improvement can only be made when we make mistakes, often thought of as failure but on that we can build so I try to encourage students to embrace failure as positive as it is a stepping stone closer to the end result. With some students, this can take a long time but it is imperative to build this relationship because it is when a child is confident enough to fail in their learning around us that we are able to take the opportunity to demonstrate to them that they are doing things right too and once they can see this, the more academic side of learning begins to take place and avoidance, almost invariably, decreases. I have adapted and developed my style over the years, and being a mother certainly changed my perspective in so many ways. I have found that when you use the technique of ignoring all reference to failure, preventing avoidance by distraction allowing the student to return to their work without having to recover from a potentially confrontational situation and always, always finding the positives, success will inevitably come about.

My specialist experience teaching students with speech, communication and language needs: I am experienced in working with children with speech, language and communication needs. The nature of this SEN is that it affects a young person in so many areas of their life, starting with expressing their needs but moving on to affect their emotional development and social interaction, create barriers to learning which can lead to extreme frustration and this may also result in behaviour issues. The culmination of all these aspects can result in significant mental health issues and it can be a very isolating experience for young people. It is therefore imperative that we create opportunities for them to build social interaction skills. There are many ways that we can help to support these children to develop their skills and become more confident. One of the most important things is, as with so many things, constant and specific praise and reward for good communication and success will come from self-belief and confidence instilled through providing a safe environment where children feel able to ask questions and take risks. It is also possible to create means of improving speech, language and communication skills by ensuring that they are provided with clear and relevant content in their teaching and learning and that there are clear learning goals so that they know how to achieve success. It is also essential to provide a selection of multi-sensory means of delivery to cover all learning styles such as reading to children, playing videos, audio books, doing practical work, providing visual support and giving a combination of audio and written directions. Furthermore, we can differentiate work to make it more manageable for children. It is essential to give them an increased thinking and response time, employing the 10 second rule so that they have time to process before trying to answer and repeating language or questions in order to give them the opportunity to navigate the information that they are given. There should be a limit to ambiguous or figurative language and, also, the use of idioms and always explain these phrases without an assumption that the child will be able to understand them. A system should be established to ensure that they can easily and discreetly ask for help if they don’t understand what has been asked of them, for example by displaying a card. Language load should also be kept to a minimum where work is bullet pointed and there is a key word list and time must be allowed for recapping both at the beginning and end of a lesson. All reading and writing should be broken down into manageable chunks and speaking should be clear and concise. If incorrect grammar is used, it should be modelled back to them correctly and they should be given the time and opportunity to repeat it. Most importantly, these children should be listened to and heard and supported in a variety of ways which will help them with their own unique struggles with speech, language and communication difficulties and no two struggles are the same so take time to understand and give very detailed and specific feedback to help children feel supported and safe and then progress will always follow.

My skills and experience teaching essay writing, including structured written English at both primary and secondary level: As an English teacher with 30 years of teaching experience both in schools and private tuition, I am experienced in teaching structured written English and essay writing. I have worked with students from age 7 to 19 (primarily secondary age 11-19) and I have taught English to students who range from those who are unable to write right through to gifted and talented. I have also taught subjects outside my specialism and have been a History teacher, an RE teacher and a Drama teacher over the years and I have also helped 6th form students write their personal statements for UCAS applications. The principles of all writing is the same if we can help a student to see how simple skills can transfer across subjects and life. English is about grabbing a student’s interest and making what they are working on relevant to life. Once they see how what they are learning works in their everyday lives, they become more interested in writing about it. I refer back to my example of a day when it was snowing in school and my Year 11 group were complaining that we had not closed the school for a snow day when other schools in the area had. They were very vocal about it so we changed the day’s task and wrote a group letter to the headteacher outlining exactly why we felt it should be a snow day. It was amazing the arguments they came up with when it was relevant to their lives and feelings so we created a letter which hit many of the targets of the GCSE for writing. It was one of their best pieces and the headteacher responded to each individual point, demonstrating to the group that not only had they been able to clearly express a viewpoint but that it was listened to and received a considered and thoughtful response to their grievances. My belief is that the underpinning of getting children motivated to write is to make it real. Then the ideas flow and once they have ideas, all they need is direction.

My skills and experience teaching Entry Level, Functional Skills, GCSE and A Level English: I was an English teacher in secondary schools for 26 years, 8 of those as a Head of English and I have been an English Language examiner for AQA. I am currently actively teaching AQA, Edexcel and Eduquas boards but I have also taught iGCSE, OCR and IB in the past. During my time as a Head of English, I have taught both Language and Literature and I have designed pathways through both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 which teach and then develop the skills required for GCSE and I have been responsible for the moderation of work within my department for all elements of the paper which includes reading, written and oral elements of the exams. Over the years, I have also seen many changes in the GCSE and A Level syllabus and have rewritten pathways and schemes of work to accommodate these changes and attended training provided by the exam boards and outside agencies to ensure that I have continued to develop professionally. I have continued to teach GCSE since I have established myself as an independent tutor two years ago and I currently tutor students who are in school as well as those in care and who are home schooled towards taking the GCSE exams. I also home schooled both of my own children for a period of time and so am familiar with negotiating the exam board demands as a parent as well as a teacher. Additionally I have worked with students who are non-verbal or partially verbal and selectively mute and I have developed skills and means to work with their individual needs. I also work with a number of students of varying ages who have English as a second language. The building of vocabulary is critical in the building of language skills and there are many ways that this can be done but each in specific to the students unique needs.

My skills and experience boosting students’ self-esteem and confidence: Self-esteem and confidence are the foundation of learning all skills, whether they are academic or life skills. Self-esteem and confidence in young people is often low and they have a huge amount of pressure on them at all times. I have worked with young people who will not go out because they feel that they are not fit to be seen in public because they are too ugly and those who have suffered the terrifying backlash of some minor incident which becomes a major event when it is posted on social media. I also find that many young people today often struggle with image and self-esteem because they constantly see a life which isn’t real being played out on social media and they then aspire to achieve that thing which isn’t real and they can never achieve. During my time teaching in schools, I always seemed to accumulate a number of mentees, particularly from Years 10 and 11 who were regular visitors or those who simply needed some emotional support in dealing with the day to day. Sometimes it is just being quiet and providing a safe place for that person to regroup without judgement. My approach to working with children who suffer from issues of self-esteem and confidence is based on the same principle of positivity. I have looked on the internet with girls and we have gone through some of the images we see and really dissected them to show the reality behind what they are seeing. Having done this, we can then look at the positives of the young person sitting in front of me and show how easy it would be to present this is different ways online and this offers the young person the opportunity to reflect. There are, of course, many reasons why students may be suffering from low self-esteem and confidence but engaging with the individual and helping them to work through whatever it is that is causing these negative feelings so that they are out there and then we have something to work with. And most importantly, even when the thing that is worrying them seems almost irrelevant and silly to you, it is potentially life controlling for the sufferer. In the past I have worked with a therapy dog at one of the schools I was at and it is surprising how something simple like taking a dog out in the fresh air and just getting the opportunity to talk and sometimes, just be quiet and reflect in peace can have a really positive effect on young people. Furthermore, my firm belief is that everyone is equal and also, in the words of Stephen Hawking, “one of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.” We need to learn to embrace our differences and make them into positive aspects of our personalities rather than yearning for a perfection that simply doesn’t exist. These are wise words of which we should all be mindful.

My skills and experience providing interesting, engaging and fun sessions and helping students to develop motivation and foster a love  of learning: As I have previously stated, building a respectful and positive relationship is the foundation and once this is established, it becomes about making learning real for the student. If a student isn’t engaging in learning it is usually for one of three reasons; firstly that they can’t do the work and they don’t want to appear “stupid” and so they choose not to do the work or try to distract, secondly that they are simply bored and they may need a break to distract them and then return to work using a slightly different approach, especially useful if you have been able to get to a point where you are talking one to one about the work and asking what they need help with and thirdly because they can’t see the point of doing it anyway. With all of the above scenarios, the answer is to show that student how what they are learning is relevant to them and real. For Maths teachers, they can take angles outside and calculate lengths and areas of what is around them and try to encourage them to think when this skill might be useful for them. As an English teacher, I choose to make it relevant in two ways; one is by using interesting and contemporary sources to develop skills, for example a modern and topical extract for them to analyse rather than a 19th Century extract. One year it was snowing and despite all the other schools closing, we didn’t have a snow day. The year 11s were “unsettled” so I got them to use their letter writing skills and frame a clear and respectful letter to the head arguing the fact that they should also have had a snow day and why. He read it and sent a considered and respectful answer in return. The students felt that they had been heard but also, they had practised letter writing using persuasive techniques. The other way is by nurturing an approach to education that they may not have previously considered. I ask them to think of education as a passport. With that passport, you have the potential of going anywhere in the world but without it, you stay home. Education is the key to that passport and although there may be lots of bits that you really don’t like, you must remember why you’re doing it and never give up. By getting them to understand the importance and relevance of what they are learning, it will help them to get one step further to achieve whatever their dream may be and if they don’t have a dream, I would encourage them to think towards the future and where they want to be next year, in 5 or possibly 10 years.

My skills and experience in teaching life skills and independence: There are many ways in which we can build the development of life skills and independence into learning experiences. The most obvious way is to model that behaviour ourselves in a positive way so that the student can see success in practice. In order to support students, again, we need to make the skills relevant and meaningful so that they can relate them to life. We should be setting challenging but attainable target goals which allow for small but measurable successes along the way. A way of doing this is to allow students to become involved in the planning of lessons and the direction that they want them to take so that they start to take ownership of their own learning. Once planning is done, we should focus learning on skills rather than knowledge. Knowledge is an excellent thing but the skills we use to obtain this knowledge are the critical learning that we need in order to be able to apply them as we go through life to develop a better understanding and, ultimately, independence. We can develop these skills by directed questioning and feedback in order to scaffold this learning but the key is to encourage the students to be self-reflective and look at where their successes are, but also to analyse where things have not turned out the way that they wanted and to assess what has gone wrong and what needs to be done to improve or correct it. When we can get students to reflect on their own practice in this way, then we have gone a long way towards creating independent learners who can apply these skills to every aspect of their life and ongoing learning.

My skills and experience supporting students with autism including high-functioning autism: Two of the schools where I was Head of English had specialist ASD units. These students ranged across the vast ASD spectrum and we taught children at both ends and somewhere in between. Although these students had special provision, the school was inclusive and ASD students were also taught in lessons with other students, up to 32 in a class. I have found it enjoyable building relationships with, and understanding the individual needs of, the students and then supporting them in the classroom and turning frustration to success. In my role as Head of Department, I often took SEN children, particularly ASD students, into my classes where they were struggling in other English lessons, for example if a class was noisy or unruly or if the teacher was not yet fully trained in working with ASD students and was maybe struggling to enable a student to feel secure within that environment. With careful seating and appropriately focused attention, the child was usually able to settle in and accept my strict classroom rules and boundaries. This firm but consistent approach has proven to work very well not only with ASD students, who often need strict rules and boundaries, but also with all students who simply need and like a consistent, predictable learning environment. I have taught a large number of ASD students privately over the years as well as in school. I have found that when the students come to me, they are often disillusioned and filled with the belief that they cannot do it, particularly an abstract subject like English which demands an analysis of inference in language which is a struggle for many those students on the spectrum even in their everyday life as they often miss nuance and body language as well as inference. Their confidence is often on the floor and they need to have this built up and an element of self esteem established before you can even start work on academic subjects. Having set small goals for the student, we establish a pattern of success and the desire to then build on this success comes naturally. This is when the student is really ready to absorb new learning. Since leaving mainstream schooling, for the last few years the vast majority of the young people whom I have taught have been somewhere on the ASD spectrum.

My skills and experience in teaching executive function skills: I believe that these skills should be embedded into every aspect of learning and taught as a matter of course. It is essential to focus students’ attention over increasing periods of time along with the understanding of the importance of, and skills to be able to, plan whether it is a written task or a route to attain a life goal. Organisational skills and memory tricks definitely help with all areas of learning and achievement and whilst many people find it extremely difficult to multi-task, it is crucial that we teach young people to be able to meet the demands of a chaotic life to to make sense of, and bring organisation to, daily challenges no matter how small or large they may seem to be. I am also a firm believer in showing young people how skills are adaptable and transferable with one of my favourite examples being that of teaching students who believe that they cannot do persuasive writing to think of a time when they have tried to persuade their parents to allow them to do something and analyse the methods they used. Young people are masters of persuasion if only they can learn how to adapt pre-existing skills! There will, of course, be times when it all seems too much to find a pathway and for these occasions, we must teach resilience, self monitoring and self control techniques to help them to focus and begin to pick their way through using the very many adaptable and transferable skills that they have. My skills and experience teaching KS2, KS3,Entry Level and Functional Skills Maths: Although my first subject is English, I have been teaching Maths now for 5 years. I have taught it to Years 4 to 10 and, as a tutor who teaches a range of subjects across the curriculum, I have really enjoyed the experience. I have taught it to primary school children both mainstream and SEN who have come to me for support, usually starting with English and extending to Maths and then as time has gone on, I have turned my skills to supporting ASD and other SEN young people of all different age groups, up to 19, who are studying for Entry Level and Functional Skills at 16 or in post-16 education. My skills and experience in teaching students with brain injuries: I have had the opportunity to teach a couple of children who have had severe brain injuries. I taught a student who had severe injury in one area of her brain and it left her in a situation where she had severe SEN and was experiencing up to 20 seizures per day. With patience and dedication, and also some original thinking and fun, we were able to build up to almost two hours without a seizure and, occasionally, even 3 hours. This required learning about the student profoundly and discovering what were triggers and not only building in regular breaks as well as a range of stimulating and less stimulating activities, but also learning to recognise moments where she may be about to go into a seizure and trying to distract from any stimulation. When they happened anyway, we became increasingly able to calm the situation and resume with a degree of normality quite quickly and after an appropriate rest break. I also worked with a young man who was virtually non-verbal and found it quite difficult to express his needs and was extremely frustrated as a result. We found areas in which he showed interest and started to focus on these in order to stimulate him and I noticed a significant improvement particularly in his mathematical skills during the time I was with him. One thing which is universal for young people suffering with brain injuries is that they need regular rest periods and plenty of time to process and act on instructions. There must also be adaptability and flexibility to everything planned as what may be very appropriate one day, may not be the next. However, all tasks require a consistent approach and repetition both at the time as well as regular re-visiting to consolidate skills and reinforce learning. Instructions should be clear and avoid figurative language and long tasks must be broken down into small chunks of manageable work in an environment which is distraction free. By doing this, it will lengthen the time periods for which young people can concentrate and progress will slowly but surely ensue.

My skills and experience of working with young people with ADHD: I have worked with children with ADHD for 30 years in a variety of different settings. There are many different presentations of ADHD and it also often accompanies children and adults with an ASD diagnosis. I have found that the trick with working with people who live with ADHD is to make tasks challenging and also fun and creative. Each individual learns in their own unique way and, as with any other learning needs, each child needs to have lessons delivered in a way that they find interesting and absorbing whilst also appreciating that concentration levels are often low and changes in task and regular movement and mind breaks are included as a matter of course. Many (but by no means all) students diagnosed with ADHD are kinaesthetic learners and so this is a good place to start but often it is a variety of different learning skills used in rotation that can work the best.

My skills and experience teaching children with memory and processing difficulties: I have worked with many students over the years who have memory and processing difficulties and I am currently privately tutoring a student with processing difficulties who has been with me for four years. Having supported him through GCSE where he managed to just achieve his required grade 4, I am now working with him on his assignments for his Public Services course at college. Over the years, I have come to understand that working with students with processing difficulties is about patience and time, working through ideas with a calm and considered response. It is also essential to ensure that ideas are broken down into individual concepts. Whilst we often concentrate on the big picture and what we want to achieve, students with processing difficulties need to work on the individual detail piece by piece to ultimately construct the final piece. Giving young people time to stop and think and reflect is not wasted time but essential for those who take longer to process. It is also imperative to keep going back to the main objective and focusing on how their ideas connect. In schools and as a private tutor, I have contributed to EHCPs and IEPs giving ideas for techniques which work with particular students who may have processing delays and the important thing is that these are unique to every individual student. Whilst we must be guided by what it on their plan, we must also know our student and think outside the box so that we are able to get them motivated and interested and then we have a foundation on which to support them in working through their ideas and then being able to record them in writing. Baby steps are where we start and we then watch our students flourish as they work through increasingly complex ideas.

Many SEN students have difficulties with recall and it is again important to break every task down, making it manageable and memorable. For example, if we are reading a text of any kind, it would be imperative to break this down into chunks and ask the student to recall and retell what has happened or be able to demonstrate understanding from careful and focussed questioning by me. By not only thinking about what they have read but also thinking about what it means, the text them becomes more meaningful as we read on and, ultimately, more memorable. Other techniques that I have used in the past is to get students to teach me, or a partner, a concept that they have just learnt which is one of the fastest ways of assessing whether a student has not only remembered what they have read or learnt but also that they fully understand it.

My skills and experience teaching students with dyspraxia and dysgraphia: Over the years I have had extensive experience of a variety of SEN within the school setting and children with dyspraxia and dysgraphia come with their own very specific set of needs. As with any child, building self confidence is the crucial foundation and it entails working in a way that the student feels able to master, rather than always feel as if they are failing to hit the targets. It can be helpful to consider alternatives to written work, for example and a description which is effective written down can be just as effective when described orally. The skills can still be built and developed without the additional stress of having to write it. It is also essential to give students the time it takes to process and develop their ideas without constantly having to move on and think of the next thing which is the beauty of one to one tuition. Like all children, regardless of whether they are SEN, need to feel that they can get to the goal by having small wins along the way, a manageable target and it is just a case of focusing these targets so that they build into long term success and, most importantly, the confidence and resilience to go on.

My skills and experience teaching students with dyslexia: Dyslexia is a very common SEN and one which all classroom teachers support on a daily, if not lesson by lesson, basis. One of the first areas I work on is to build confidence in the student. They have often taken many knocks and are left feeling that they just can’t do it but with the right support, I can soon get students to recognise that they are able but they need to separate the challenges presented by dyslexia and their own innate ability and the way in which I do this is to provide them with a range of different and bespoke tasks to do which focus on their interests and subjects about which they feel confident and then they are able to detract from the knowledge element and start focussing on the skills which will help them to alleviate the challenges. I believe that students with dyslexia benefit from one-to-one support, regular teaching, even over teaching, and repetition so that they are able to familiarise themselves with work. Students with dyslexia of every age need to go back to phonics and work on breaking words down into sounds, even simple words like ‘dog’ have three separate sounds in and by being able to break down words in this way, it helps to understand new words and also to build up spellings of familiar words. We can then use these skills to read together. Reading is often disliked by a dyslexic student but it is really important and by practising reading together, with time and patience, a student is able to build their skills. We can vary reading types by asking a student to read aloud so that we can support them but also learn to listen to word sounds when we read aloud to them and independence by reading to themselves. A combination of these will help to build fluency and understanding. I have also worked with students who use both text to speech function and speech recognition on their computers, often popular as verbal skills are usually better than writing skills. There are many new innovations which are becoming popular online which support dyslexic students of all ages. Finally, I also believe that learning should be stimulating and fun. Students should feel relaxed and comfortable in their learning environment and we should be tapping into their interests as stimuli. When planning to write, we should be experimenting with different techniques such as mind mapping or using Venn diagrams rather than listing and finding whatever way it takes to make it work. Every student who is dyslexic experiences a completely unique set of challenges and we need to support them in whatever way they need.

My skills and experience teaching students who are reluctant writers: Young people can be resistant to writing for a huge range of reasons and as with all aspects of SEN, it is important to understand why they are reluctant in order to help them to overcome their difficulties. Beyond this, however, there are a number of ways that we can work to support them. The most important, in my opinion, is to make writing current and relevant. An example would be a bottom set Year 11 which I taught some years ago where the students were beside themselves because many of the schools in the local area had been closed as a snow day had been declared but our school had carried on regardless. I used this an opportunity to get them writing a letter to the Headteacher (a task which is one of the possible section B questions in the GCSE Paper 2) stating their points in a persuasive manner as to why they felt our school should be closed too. They then sent these to the Head who had received, I hasten to add, a heads up from me. They were delighted to receive a considered response to their arguments from him via email the following day. It is also really important to ensure that young people understand the process for successful writing so they should brainstorm their thoughts and then consider how they may be able to order these thoughts to create a structured response. We do this by discussion with me helping them to work through what order things could go in and why so that they have a concept of how the writing will progress but it is also important that we start with slightly less specific requirements and that we are respectful of the responses they give even though they may not fit a required mark scheme at first. They should understand that mistakes are OK and that is how we learn and then we build on these lessons to create a piece with more structure and appropriate techniques for the set task. Finally, it is important to mix up assignments and not spend too long on them so that they become boring but also to limit choice as this can become overwhelming. There is a fine balance here. By giving a list of appropriate vocabulary and techniques we can empower young people to write successfully and in an engaging manner for a variety of different purposes.

My skills and experience teaching inference and writing extended answers: as an English teacher, my experience lies here. As part of the English KS3 and GCSE Language and Literature syllabus, we are teaching students to understand not simply what is being said to us but how we read between the lines to gather understanding beyond what is stated. The ‘reading between the lines’ element is not only what English is about but it is a skill which helps us to understand our everyday life and the nuance of speech and mannerisms. It is a fascinating subject and I find that if we can engage students in understanding how it operates in our day to day life, they can then start to spot it in reading and be able to recreate it in writing tasks. Having understood this, it is then relatively simple to make the jump from writing one line answers to writing an exploration of what a statement suggests rather than simply what it says. My experience here lies not only as an English teacher but also as an English tutor where the majority of the students I teach come to me as more Maths and Science fans where stating fact is valued over exploring inference and I get great pleasure from teaching them just how much fun and how valuable these skills can be.

My skills and experience teaching Maths: Although my specialism is in English, I have been teaching Maths for many years with the 11+ and 13+ and for the last five years, from KS1 (in terms of level) right through to functional skills and GCSE. I have worked on developing my skills in teaching Maths because I often work with children and other young people who really struggle with working with more than one teacher at a time and so I have developed my range of teaching to cover a number of non-specialist subjects. I really enjoy Maths myself and I enjoy the challenge of making Maths less of a challenge and more of something which we can enjoy studying through a range of different ways.

My skills and experience working specifically with children with PDA: I have worked with a vast number of children with PDA over the years and it is finally becoming more recognised in schools. There are a number of ways in which to support these children but flexibility is key to success. It is essential to be prepared and be armed with a variety of tasks which can be changed in an instant and instructions should be kept short and simple. Reassurance and allowing the children to have emotional and physical space is necessary if they are to learn how to deal with, and overcome, these anxieties. Furthermore, it is crucial to communicate in a way which is both collaborative and respectful and always to pick your battles. I feel that we need to reduce the demands on the child who should be allowed a sense of control and be able to negotiate so that they get the feeling that they have won and are therefore more likely to buy into the activity that you then pursue. Instructions should also be focused on the positive and what you would like to happen rather than the negative behaviour that you would like to stop. For example, instead of requesting that a child does not keep speaking over you, you may want to say that they may find that they would understand better if they listened to what you were saying. Above all, keeping a sense of humour throughout is critical.

My skills and experience in teaching children with behavioural and emotional regulation needs: I have strong behaviour management skills from working for so long and in senior positions in schools, especially working in a special measures school as Head of English. Here, the students who have been causing behaviour problems elsewhere were moved in my class and they were often made up of the most colourful students in the year making for interesting lessons. I have found, however, that the vast majority of students, if they feel they can do something, will do it and most disruptive behaviour is based on an insecurity on some level. If you can overcome the insecurity, you remove the need for the behaviour. For this to work, you need to know your students well and have built a positive relationship so that they can accept change confidently. I also believe that good behaviour is built on adapting to ensure that you engage with your students to discover what lies beyond a student’s behaviour and what their interests are. If you can build on common interests, a child will want to have a conversation about that when they walk in the room and their behaviour changes. They have a desire to engage and once you have the initial spark of engagement, it unlocks the door and you can offer new ideas to an open mind. Finally, improved behaviour rarely occurs when you are constantly sanctioning a student. It is really important to catch students doing things which are right and helping them to improve their work by praising what they have accomplished, how impressively they managed to achieve it. Positive reinforcement is the most powerful tool that we have. Since leaving the classroom, I have worked with a range of young people who have been excluded from school, often permanently due to behaviour and this can really impact their life chances going forward. The most effective way of supporting this in the long term is, after building a strong and trusting relationship, is to teach the young person to help regulate their emotions. This can be done through a range of means, each of which must be tailored individually to the student. They may encompass breathing techniques, distraction methods, musical intervention, and sensory responses as an immediate response. Over time, the use of social stories, zones of regulation and other teaching methods to help the young person to recognise their emotions and ultimately to start learning to use these techniques themselves to begin to regulate and prevent them from reaching a stage of high anxiety.

My skills and in experience teaching children with sensory/auditory needs: I have a broad experience of working with children with both sensory and auditory needs and understand how sensory experiences can be enhancing and enriching and that these sensory experiences are a really important part of understanding the world and it is good practice to expose young people to a range of experiences but it is imperative to also understand how they can very easily become overwhelming. It is important to build trust and know your student well in order to easily spot the signs that something may be too much and remove them from the situation immediately. It is common to see such reactions such as withdrawal, covering of eyes or ears, rocking, fleeing in children who are hyper-sensitive and putting things into their mouth, touching things, hugging to hard and crashing into things may be more than co-ordination but signify a child who is under sensitive to sensory and auditory experiences. Children who are not stimulated effectively will experience developmental delay. I would create a safe sensory space where a child feels safe, introduce new experiences and take note of whether the child needs up regulating or down regulating and stimulate accordingly, provide sensory resources and also a safe space to remove themselves from it, teach the child to recognise their sensory needs and learn how to satisfy these needs increasingly independently and provide predictability in a calm, patient and positive way.

My skills and experience with helping young people to express their feelings and emotions: I have worked with a number of ASD students who have been non-verbal or semi-verbal and in school with children who are selectively mute and need to be encouraged to communicate in inventive ways to make themselves understood. It is really important for all people, young and old, to be able to express their feelings and emotions. We have to be able to do this in order to feel understood and it can be incredibly frustrating and isolating when we aren’t. I encourage young people to express their emotions verbally where possible and in other ways where not. They may be able to pick from emotion cards, draw emojis, use sign language or simplified language with pre-determined associations and even experimenting with facial expressions in a fun way. I am a great believer in trying everything and if we don’t yet have a way, we’ll find one.

My skills and experience motivating students: I believe the key to motivating students is to empower them and help them to recognise the benefits of learning. In order to do this, tasks need to be made real and relevant to students, giving them meaning and purpose. I do this by building good relationships with students and understanding where their strengths and interests are and then look at where their barriers to learning are and what we can do to break them down. I therefore provide a variety of activities which are enjoyable but which also allow me to create realistic performance goals which are challenging, achievable and appropriate to the student in front of me. Many students who lack motivation also lack self esteem and the fear of failure prevents them from achieving their potential. I like to model my enthusiasm for learning and life and provide an environment where it safe to make mistakes and which also provides opportunities for success and by making goals smart, real and achievable, I pass a sense of control over to my student where they can see that they are able to achieve. I see this process as slow but steady and it is like stepping stones. Each new skill or success is one step further to their final destination and by taking it steadily, we will eventually but surely get there.

My specialist skills and experience as a learning mentor and to reach their full potential: In my role as Head of English, I managed a team of learning mentors working with individual and groups of children throughout the school. We would create targets specific to each of the students’ needs and work towards SMART targets to achieve their goals. I think that as a learning mentor it is imperative to have excellent interpersonal and communications skills but equally important is to have excellent listening skills as young people who are struggling need to be heard and we need to find new ways of approaching work which may seem unmanageable to them at first. We all learn in different ways and sometimes learning styles which are addressed in class are not the best fit for the young person and they may benefit from a different approach to develop understanding. I have also ensured that all learning mentors are flexible and spontaneous so that, if they need to think on their feet to change their approach as it is not resonating with the student, they can do so. As a learning mentor and manager of mentors, I believe that it is crucial to be highly organised and model organisational skills and from here we can then formulate plans together which makes the work much more accessible. Ultimately, as a mentor, I provide support, advice and guidance tailored to each individual’s personal needs.

My skills and experience working with teenagers and young adults: I have spent the last 30 years working with teenagers and young adults not only in school but I have also had and raised two children of my own whom, having both followed unconventional paths in life so far, are now 20 and 23. I have been surrounded by young adults for all of my life. I feel very privileged to have been able to teach, support nurture them and hopefully not only prepare them for their exams and school life but also prepare them for an adult life which is going to hit them hard when they move on within or outside of education and I believe that it is our role as teachers to do this. Throughout my career as a teacher and Head of English, I have worked with a huge range of students with an unbelievable range of talents and skills but, there are always those who know that they can do it and those who always believe that they don’t have a talent. Everyone does. It is our job to inspire that child to find what that is and show it to the world. This is their confidence and belief in themselves and helps to create a vision of the future which they then have a purpose to work towards. Since leaving the education system in December 2019, I have been working as a private tutor and have worked with all sorts of young people. I have worked with young people with a variety of educational needs. In 2020, I worked with a young man who had been a victim of exploitation and modern slavery and with 16 criminal convictions, he had been forced to relocate. Working with him was challenging and even developing a framework whereby he was able to realise the value of what we were doing was a constant battle but we spent many hours doing very every day things such as searching and shopping for recipes which he then cooked when we got home or we went out walking with the dogs and talking about his feelings and how he was managing them as well as his aspirations and hopes for the future. Then the discussion would turn to what he needs to do in order to make these things happen. After many applications and interviews, he finally succeeded and is now unrecognisable as the young man I met last February. He is thriving on a plumbing course.

I have been working with a young man who is 22 for nearly two years. He has ASD, OCD and suffers from acute anxiety. He has not left the house for 6 years and I speak to him through his bedroom door. It has taken just over a year for him to trust me enough to speak and, although he is still behind his bedroom door, we have very lively and interesting debates on politics, philosophy, physics and we have read and analysed a number of literature books.I have taught students who have been out of school for some time due to behaviour or illness and either need support catching up or with home schooling. I have taught students with psychosis, ASD, ADHD, those between schools waiting for a more appropriate school placement and those who have been permanently excluded from one or more schools. I have also taught teenagers and young adults who have been out of school for extended periods of time due to behaviour, illness or other SEMH issues and they need support catching up work or with home schooling. Often, it is the same issue where it is essential to lead these students to the belief that they are able to get back to where they were. Over the last year, I have taught students with psychosis, ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, speech and language delays, sensory processing disorder, pathological demand avoidance, SEBD, SEMH, those between schools waiting for a more appropriate school placement and those who have been permanently excluded from one or more schools. It has been a whirlwind but the one thing that they have in common is that once you are able to make that connection, progress happens almost instantly, and it is the reason I love my job.

My skills and experience teaching study skills and revision techniques: Again, as a teacher with 30 years of experience of teaching all levels and abilities in schools, and also with my tutees, I am practised and experienced in teaching study skills and revision techniques. I often find that students are given revision techniques with which to work and timetables from which to work but they don’t really know what they are actually supposed to be doing. Often they will spend time reading through past work repeatedly and for knowledge based subjects particularly, this may be essential but real studying and revision which sticks is practical and active, not passive. All of my students who get revision homework are given structured and practical tasks to do and I try to work with them and model what these revision skills look like and how they will work for them. As with everything else, each student is a unique individual and skills which work for one student may not work for another.

My specialist experience teaching students to develop their focus and concentration skills: This can be a very difficult area for a vast number of children and teenagers and, like anything else, we need to model and teach them how to develop the skills that they need in this area. We live in a society where we are all constantly multi-tasking and juggling many different things at the same time and we need to encourage young people to take a step back from this and give all their attention to one thing at a time. We can do this by working in a quiet environment where there are no distractions and remove temptations which may move their attention elsewhere. Consistency and routine are other crucial aspects to developing focus and concentration but this does not necessarily mean that it is focused academic work at all times as memory games and other fun activities are at least equally important.Whilst encouraging this focus, however, it is essential to provide a balance and allow for regular planned breaks where these other distractions may then be tactically introduced. It is also imperative that young people have the opportunity to let off steam and energy so physical exercise is a really important outlet. This can come from doing activities which are energetic and physically tiring but also taking time to walk and enjoy nature and the moment where their focus is on nothing other than what is going on around them and it is also an opportunity for introducing outdoor learning which has become an extremely popular concept, hence the introduction and success of forest school activities into so many schools.

My skills and experience in supporting transition back into the classroom: I have been working with young people of all ages who are being home schooled for a variety of reasons from mental health to behaviour to physical health and genuinely believe that it is extremely important that, if they are resilient enough to be able to cope with schooling, it is important to get them mixing with peers of their own age. Over 90% of the young people I have tutored end up returning to some kind of educational setting although sometimes this can mean alternative provisions in the form of alternative schools or even working and socialising with other children who are being home schooled. It does, however, mean picking apart what the issues and stumbling blocks are and working on these in a number of alternative ways which can be time consuming and which can only go as fast as the child is able to manage but it is usually a great success, particularly (but not solely) with the younger children.

My specialist skills and experience as a lead practitioner/ teacher of a multi-disciplinary team: I was Head of English in three different schools over ten years, the average size of which was 12 members of staff within the department which ranged from newly qualified and non-specialist subject teachers through to teachers from overseas who needed to learn the UK curriculum and then to very experienced members of the team. In my role, I was also responsible for attending planning and strategy meetings with SLT and weekly line management meetings with the Head Teacher where we also discussed the management of the department and human resources. I was responsible for the Teaching Assistants who were attached to key pupils within the department and these TAs came from both the SEN department and the Communications Base which was a specialist ASD department which ran inclusively within the school. I planned and re-wrote the entire school English curriculum with an English consultant who was externally sourced and I also greeted, liaised with and wrote reports for external specialists who came into the department to do assessments such as Educational Psychologists and other key workers.

My specialist skills in supporting the teaching of SEN children in the community/ active learning/ creative learning: My philosophy is that all children deserve an education that is relevant and appropriate to them in whatever form that takes. For a huge number of children and young people, a conventional education is not appropriate or suitable and they need something which is much more tailored to their needs, and they have the same right as every other young person to receive this. Whilst I believe that the situation with Covid has brought this to the fore and highlighted this diversity, it has always been thus, and I welcome the changes that are being made to ensure that everyone has their educational needs catered for in whatever format suits them best. As a parent with two (now adult) children who did not fit the mould for very different reasons and whom both had to access alternative forms of education, I am committed to providing a meaningful and relevant education to every child in the community.

My skills and experience teaching young people who have suffered brain injury: I have worked with a couple of children who have suffered from brain injury, one of whom was born with brain injury and another who developed it. I have also worked with a student who suffered between 10 and 30 epileptic fits per day and it affected every area of her life and her ability to be independent. One parent said to me that she loved that I respected her son as a person and understood his needs and that some of his actions of seeming aggression were not at all aggressive but instinctive urges that he was simply unable to control. We worked on how to help him control these urges and, when he couldn’t, we developed methods of dealing with them in a non-confrontational and gentle way. I hope that she felt this because I see every person as their own unique set of characteristics. It is essential that we build a caring and nurturing relationship with the student in front of us and identify where there are strengths and weaknesses and also what the triggers may be. We need to be able to read these young people like a book and be able to pre-empt difficulties they are experiencing and when they have reached their limit and a break or change needs to take place.

My other teaching experience: I tutored for the 11+, 12+ and 13+ exams and also the ISEB 11+ pre-tests and 13+ including for children with special exam arrangements and am experienced and confident in delivering this tuition too.