About me

Hi there everyone!

Just trawling throught the site so I thought I would add my profile as well!

I am married with two children. The eldest is 21 and in th eprocess of moving out to live in Jersey ( lucky him eh?) the younger is nearly 16 and in the process of taking/preparing for GCSEs.

We live in a semi – rural village on the outskirts of Nuneaton, next to a huge country park. Over the past 3 years, we have been renovating an old house and it is just about done now. I get quite excited when we get a room finished and we actually got carpet on the stairs at Christmas!

My early life was spent travelling around the world with Mum and Dad as hge was in the Navy. One of the main places we lived was Singapore. My formal education was very mixed as you can imagine, but I feel my informal education was superb, as I saw so many places and cultrures, and had to become able to make new friends quickly!

We eventually setteld in the Midlands. After I grew up, I travelled independently for a while. I eventually got a proper job in an office. After I married and had the children, I decided to return to formal learning, and ‘fill in the gaps’ missed whilst younger. I was accepted at the University of Warwick as a mature student on the innovative 2+2 degree course. ( 2 years at a local FE college, the 2 years at Warwick) I graduated in 1998 with a BA Social Studies (hons) I had worked during the last year of this full time degree as a teaching assistant, and this encouraged me to look at teaching as a career. I had a lot of trouble getting into teacher training as my degree was not in a curriculum area, but eventually got on a distance learning/m,entored PGCE at Leeds Uni. I taught for several years, then went into Family Learning work with Warwickshire County counil.

My job involves working closely with schools and early years centres, and the parents of children there. I act as a kind of interpreter, explaining how literacy and numeracy is taught in schools and ealry years settings, and how they can best support their children. The idea is to encourage those parents who need essential skills support to progress onto our essential skills classes, or ICT provision through a Learndirect centre, one of which we staff and run. Some of my longer courses, which run at times throughout the year, have a stronger emphasis on the parents skills, rather than their children.

I like my work, but as with everything, there are also downsides . If I mention targets , funding, and paperwork,I think you know what I mean!