'Education is a two-way thing! It is not just the skills and knowledge we teach our young people that are important but the lessons we can learn from our students too!'

I was working in Spain teaching English to Spanish and Moroccan students, running a chilli farm and working as a freelance writer.

One summer, the travellers arrived at the local campsite and asked if I would teach the children to read. The next day, I headed down to the campsite armed with my phonics worksheets.

The students, whose ages ranged from 4-14, switched off immediately and became restless, and with boredom comes mischief.

I needed to get to know these children before we could progress any further, so the following day we headed into the fruit fields.

We picked oranges, lemons, pomegranates, and figs. We used our senses to help put into words how these fruits looked, felt, tasted, and smelt. We made bark rubbings of knotted old olive and almond trees and listened to the sounds of nature.

The children opened up and started telling me about themselves, and I realised I needed to teach them skills that would be useful to their transient lives.

 

I taught them basic words and phrases in Spanish, how to read simple menus and signs then we progressed to money skills, geography and map reading.

One day, one of the children handed me a drawing of his caravan. It was a beautiful chalk drawing, but missing from the picture was the caravan's wheels, so I handed it back for the young boy to finish, posing the question 'How are you going to move your caravan?’

He screwed his face up deep in concentration, picked up a stumpy pink crayon and drew on a tow bar.

It was this moment that taught me a valuable lesson, it's not just what we teach our young people that is important, the lessons we can learn from them too, and this inspired me to return to college in the UK to gain the qualifications to work in education.

After gaining my qualifications, I worked in a mainstream primary school before moving to a SEN school in Cheshire working with autistic students, and students with sensory processing and complex learning needs (aged 3-19)

 

I wanted to find a way to connect the students to literature, culture, history and topic in a way that was meaningful to their lives as well as creating motivating learning experiences that promoted communication skills and areas of learning, so I started writing and delivering sensory stories.

In March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit I built my website as a free resource to help parents, carers and educators during the during the school closures.

 

I now divide my time writing new material and delivering training.