Twitter this week has had lots of people sharing photos of themselves 10 years ago and present day. I don’t have photos from 10 years ago but this week does mark 10 years since I started to rebuild both my life and my career after a complete breakdown, losing my job and having to return to the UK.

I have been sitting on this blog for quite a while, not sure whether I should post it or not but in a moment of bravery I am going to post it – Maybe…..

I have really stayed away from commenting on the Covid-19 lockdown and how different schools have approached their home learning. Mostly because I have been too busy sorting my own classes and getting up to speed with new technology and a new way of teaching.

This post is about using Teams and OneNote in lessons as the teacher, I am not sure if there is an alternative for Google Classrooms.

Teaching abroad can be a wonderful experience for many people, they find the work/life balance is much better, there is more teacher agency and the pay is better. You also get the experience of living in a different culture and a country, (which can mean much nicer weather than the UK – which to be fair isn’t that hard!) And this is great when this happens but I want to share my experience of teaching abroad which wasn’t those things, in fact my experience of teaching abroad pretty much broke me and almost had me leave the profession.

Over the last 12 months I have seen multiple calls for lessons on political literacy to be included to the national curriculum, but I would like to point out that political literacy has been a statutory part of the national curriculum since 2002, and I am one of those teachers whose PGCE was Citizenship education and yet does not teach it as a discrete subject.

…. It doesn’t help at times but it is an over simplification to think that something as complicated and multifaceted as mental health can be reduced to simply the job that you do.

For the past 5 years I have worked in and lived at a state boarding school. Prior to this I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a state boarding school and the thought of living on site was one that I couldn’t contemplate. However after returning from working abroad I needed not only a job but also a place to live and I got both with what was initially a 6 week position.