Dee

My specialist experience working with students with SEN to develop trusting and meaningful relationships: I have over 10 years of experience working with SEND children within the mainstream setting. The knowledge I have gathered over the years has allowed me to build my confidence and in return help students build theirs. Through my many years of teaching, I have had the opportunity to work with some delightful students who have had trouble building meaningful relationships with staff. By ensuring I take the time to get to know the young person, I feel like I am able to quickly build a rapport and therefore gain their trust, which in turn means they make progress. My experience of being: Head of Year, co-leading a department and working in diverse schools, with varying demographics, across the UK, has led me to meet a range of students who I have been able to speedily build excellent rapports with. I believe it is important to ensure the young person is heard and that they feel valued. I feel a way to do this is by ensuring any progress is shared with parents and carers – no matter how small. Having the privilege of working in many schools has meant I have faced different challenges and have had to quickly adapt to find methods that work for the individual. In one of my roles (early on in my career) I realised how easily things were overlooked by a neurotypical person and how a neurodiverse person may struggle with day-to-day things. 

In my previous position as a Catch Up Teacher, I have been involved in creating individual resources, targeting specific areas of development through the child’s interests. I have worked as an English Teacher and Tutor for many years, as well as a Head of Year. Therefore, I know how vital it is for the young person to feel like they are being supported and heard. In my role as Head of Year, I had to build quick meaningful rapports with lots of (SEND) students and parents and help them to navigate the weird and wonderful world of secondary education. 

My experience teaching autistic young people: I have worked with many young autistic people over the years and have tailored work (where I can) to suit their interests and encourage a love for learning. I have found by doing this to engages young people rapidly and allows quicker progress to be made. The best example I can give with this is trialling these techniques with my own daughter who has autism. I feel like everyday I learn more and more about girls with autism through my reading and interaction with them. This is a topic I am extremely passionate about. 

My experience teaching young people with Working Memory Difficulties: With students who have Working Memory Difficulties I feel it is important to know their learning style and to find creative and repetitive ways of helping the information to ‘stick’. Through the research I have done, I have trailled methods that have worked for students and have been pleased with this. This is another area I am interested in and continue to engage in literature around this topic as much as I can.

My experience working with young people to boost their confidence and self-esteem: Early on in my career, in my second year of teaching I had a class which contained lots of children with SEMH/mental health needs and I have never been so challenged before. I am very grateful to have been given this class because it has taught me MANY skills that I have used to help my students progress in their learning. I worked closely with parents/carers and other teachers to help manage behaviour, expectations and created goals that were achievable which motivated them to do better. Through my years of teaching I have been privileged to meet young people who have had their confidence and self-esteem boosted. I’ve dealt with students who have had severe anxiety attacks and have not been able to come into school, they finally came into school and went to their lessons and came into assemblies etc. This was only achieved because of the rapport I built with them and through gaining their trust and paying attention to their likes and dislikes. As the child felt heard, they made progress. I’ve also dealt with children with SEND needs who have felt inspired to work harder in my lessons and again this is because I stopped to listen to them. 

I’ve also built the confidence of a student who was a selective mute and over time and with lots of encouragement when asked a question in class (arranged with the student beforehand) they were able to answer. This was a big step for them! It means a lot to me to be able to build a young person’s confidence and self-esteem because it took me a long time for me to build it for myself so if I can help a young person realise how powerful they are – I’m all for it! As a teacher I tried to be understanding with speech and language difficulties and have tried different methods with young people in the past. After becoming a parent, I am more aware of the barriers children with speech and language difficulties are presented with and have tried and will keep trying different methods with my own child. I am continuing my own learning in this field to help create resources and methods to allow progress to be made. 

My specialist experience providing engaging sessions to inspire a love of learning: Over the years, having some challenging classes has taught me valuable skills in getting students to engage with their learning. I honestly believe if you are passionate and are having fun, you’ve already got a ‘buy-in’ from the students. Positive energy is contagious and this sprinkled in with a sense of humour and a healthy dose of patience is key to success. 

My skills and experience supporting students to develop their independence: Seeing the world through the eyes of children and specifically their struggles to understand and navigate the world around them, makes me want to do everything in my power to help them. Respecting and appreciating our differences is essential in empowering our future generations. As I mentioned above, being heard, being seen and feeling respected and valued is how a person, regardless of age can build their independence. I believe, positive praise, patience and self reflection are very important ingredients to building independence. 

My experience teaching young people with speech and language needs: My daughter has speech and language needs so I understand first-hand the difficulties presented, both from a parent’s and child’s perspective. As a teacher, I’ve had many conversations with parents about the advice professionals have given them and have implemented these with the students I teach. Over the years I have found a cocktail of: open communication (verbal or visual), lots of praise and patience and following the guidance given by the professional helps. 

My experience teaching young people with ADHD and my experience teaching young people with SEMH/behavioural needs and anxiety: After getting to know students, applying the material from my course and liaising with the student, I have tried some ‘out-of-the-box’  techniques and although not all of these methods have worked for all students, some have. Furthermore, through my experience of working with a severely anxious child who was reluctant to come into the classroom, I gained an insight of the mental barriers that this young person faced. I spoke to them, asked questions and shared of my my anxieties both as a teenager and as an adult and told them how I overcame the barriers I faced and developed strategies that helped. One of my proudest moments in teaching was seeing that young person entered the classroom, although it was for a short period of time – it was still progress. These students now take pride in their work, have made progress and are keen to have their lessons with me (be it they may not always be in the best frame of mind but will always try). I believe they feel like this because I take the time to get to know them and build a rapport with them. I celebrate their work with all (no matter how small) and set high expectations and offer them plenty of scaffold and praise along the way. I have taught many students over the years (of different abilities) who have had ADHD and SEMH/ behavioural needs and I do believe communicating with students honestly, listening to them and being able to adapt is key to keeping them engaged in their learning and helping them with their mental health. Along with this, breaking down the tasks and setting goals into manageable chunks is key to helping build executive functioning skills. I have taught a few young people with anxiety and I truly believe: patience, praise and celebrating progress are vital to create success, build confidence and independence. Another topic of personal interest to me is mental health and again in my role as Head of Year, there were many times I had to liaise with outside agencies to help the young people in school. 

My experience in teaching social skills and friendship skills: From personal experience I know how daunting it can be to make friends and navigate social situations. Over the years I have learnt ways to help in social skills and have shared these with my students. When working in some of the secondary schools, I would often have student who would come back and discuss such topics as these with me. I also did some mentoring in school and working as a Head of Year, I often had students coming to me seeking advice and help with such matters.

My experience supporting young people with A Levels; study skills, revision structure, time management, procrastination:

I have taught resit classes previously in different schools and I’ve found trying the conventional methods do not work for some of these students because they need more direct instructions and targeted coaching to be able to begin to process the methods needed to answer the questions. They need a lot more time and patience to go through the answers, reflect and then be given the space to strengthen their skills. I strongly believe it is about ‘chunking it down’ into manageable chunks and creating engaging ways to make material ‘stick’. This is something I still do today with my CPD, tasks and life’s admin and I am open and honest about what I find difficult with my students but also model how I do it.

My experience teaching young people with complex medical needs: During my years of teaching, I have been lucky to be trusted with students who have had complex medical needs in my classes. I always try my best to make sure every child feels heard and seen but it is very important to me to allow students with complex medical needs to feel like they have been given the opportunity, time and space to learn. I have taught students from long-term medical illness, to severe skin conditions and other complex medical needs. I feel keeping lines of communication open with all, being patient and building a respectful rapport is always key in ensuring a child learns and has fun, despite their challenges. Furthermore, the complexities of my own daughter’s needs has made me much more compassionate and understanding both as a parent and a teacher.

My experience teaching young people with challenging behaviour: Over the years, I have worked in an array of schools where some students behaviour has been challenging. Very quickly I have learnt to listen to what the students wanted, tried different techniques and methods to help defuse situations. I’ve found building trust, a good rapport and gaining their respect very quickly eliminates any reason to present challenging behaviour. The students I have taught in the past felt safe enough to communicate their needs. This is also techniques I use with my own children now.

My experience teaching Executive Functioning and Study Skills: I have experience in teaching in many different schools with varying students so I have had to learn very quickly how to help the young people I teach. I’ve previously created personalise targets and helped find methods that help students learn, progress and feel confident in themselves. Even today, there are methods I use that I have taught my students to use. 

My experience teaching young people with DCD/dyspraxia: From my experience of teaching students with dyspraxia, patience and praising to boost confidence is important. Giving the student time to do the activity and sometimes even giving them opportunities to have visual queues or doing muscle warm ups can be helpful. Understanding and showing you are aware that it takes the young people with dyspraxia longer to understand or complete a task is crucial in building their confidence and helping them to reinforce whatever skill it is they are learning. Lots of repetition, praise and patience goes a long way. 

 My experience teaching young people with Tourette’s and Tics:I have worked with a few students who do have Tourette’s and Tics and after getting to know the students, I have learnt how to manage them so that they are not overwhelmed. This has meant sometimes changing the planned lesson to help the students cope and looking out for signs before they are distressed. Where I can, I will always inject fun into the lessons because I feel students work a lot better if they feel more relaxed and are enjoying the process of learning. 

My experience teaching young people with dysphoria: In my role as Head of Year, I have experience working with students in the past who have had mental health difficulties, students who have been transitioning, students with dysphoria and students who have needed support with multiple other things. I have enjoyed having discussions with these young people and understanding the world through their gaze. Being a young person is difficult, being a young person in this day and age must be incredibly confusing and difficult to navigate. I truly believe in supporting young people the best I can. 

My experience helping young people to prepare for the 11+: I am working with a publisher to publish some resources created to help students with their comprehension; I have previously published 11+ resources, I’ve created exam papers for  a tutoring company and I have some resources created specifically for SEND students the pipeline too. In addition to working with the publishers, I am also liaising with exam boards to find ways to further support SEND students. To ensure I am up to date with current affairs and legislation, I am a governor in a local school and liaise with colleagues within my profession to keep up-to-date with any changes and I engage in conversations within my community to help break down barrier and help education people so they are better able to support neurodiverse individuals. I am coming to the end of my course in National Professional Qualification in Leading Literacy (NPQLL) and will be enrolling onto another course soon (National Professional Qualification in Specific Educational Needs – NPQSENCO).