Nicky

I began teaching over twenty years ago as a secondary English Teacher, at a time where creativity and imagination still had a solid place in the curriculum alongside the rigours of spelling and grammar. My classroom was bursting at the seams with drama, art and multi-sensory learning. I am still in touch with many of my early students who love to reminisce about how much they loved our lessons. After taking a sabbatical to teach in the refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border, I began work in alternative learning provisions where I discovered a love of teaching students with SEN.

Here, I designed whole Key Stage 4 curriculums around the individual students we had in our small groups and saw many a school refuser end up loving English and leaving with their GCSEs. I am very familiar with the school requirements in Key Stage 3 and 4 and am skilled in adapting these to the needs of individual learners. The main advantage I find of working with individuals and small groups is how the students become more independent in their learning. When their needs are met, they feel ready to engage and take ownership over their progress which is a real catalyst for development.

It was also in alternative provision I recognised the need to specialise in teaching learners with dyslexia and completed my Level 5 Diploma at Helen Arkell, passing with a distinction. On this course, I learnt the theory and practice of diagnostic assessment, the ability to pinpoint the gaps in learning and design fun and creative sessions to build mastery in these gaps. In my current role, I teach students who are out of school – very often for lack of a suitable SEN placement. In our sessions, I work with the individual’s strengths and interests to devise multi-sensory activities that account for their learning needs – be they trouble with working memory, organisation, processing or executive function.

My most recent role in a school was as a Reading Lead – a two year contract to audit the school’s reading policy and approach and design and deliver a system that would see reading progress for learners at every stage. This was a challenging and fascinating role which led me to the work of Doug Lemov (literacy instruction), Alex Quigley (supporting SEN readers) and Timothy Rasinski (fluency). I worked closely with the SALT to ensure every opportunity to support and develop language development was taken.

I thoroughly researched the most effective ways to support reading instruction and employed them across a large secondary school. My inset training of whole staff, combined with intensive tuition and rigorous implementation meant that reading levels raised by at least a year for every student with SEN and nearly all of the remainder of the school.

In every role I have held, my consistent focus was building a rapport with my students; taking the time to listen to their story and understand how they learn, engaging with their family to enrich my picture of how to best plan personalised sessions and maintaining a non-judgemental, kind approach to every interaction. My approach is calm, flexible, well-planned and paced to engage the learner using their interests and strengths to build up their areas of struggle.