Moving towards a new reality

I always wanted to be a teacher. More accurately, I always wanted to be Mrs Mann. She was my first teacher and I remember her filling up her blackboard with so many joined letter 'c's' that it looked like waves.

Forty five years later I can say that I realised that ambition and a bit more to boot. Blackboards and chalk had all but sadly been eradicated from classrooms but I was lucky enough to have one classroom with a rotating board. In that classroom I thought of Mrs Mann a lot.

Now I am almost fifty and I have decided that I want to achieve something else, something more personal to me. You see, despite going on to be a senior leader for many years and for two years, even a headteacher, I always hated school.

I hated the way it was organised, I hated the subjects, I hated the way the timings were so strictly enforced and bizarrely allocated. Who on earth thought that double maths might actually help my learning? FFS!

Along the way, I have tried to make the schools I have worked in less formal, more fun, more vibrant but alas I give in. I don't think I will ever see mainstream education flex and bend the way I want it to, and maybe it shouldn't. Perhaps for most kids it works?

So now, I am putting my energies into a small group of pure fabulousness! I will ensure that the new 'Unschooling' group allows for freedom to be you, freedom to explore and be curious and most importantly the freedom to learn.