Hello. I'm Kate. I hail from Yorkshire, studied in Scotland and spent a fair bit of time in France, Germany and London. I currently live in Paris.
As a writer, I wrote a montly column for a lifestyle magazine for two years and also wrote (and continue to write) for education content producers and publications (see gallery).
I am a proud ambassador of Arvon, the UK’s leading creative writing charity and am a former trustee.
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As a teacher, I have worked in primary, prep and secondary schools for the past 18 years. My current role is Assistant Head of Primary of the British Section of an international school with 14 different Sections (home countries).
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I am a passionate and innovative educator and my practice is informed by evidence-based research and a wealth of classroom expeience. As a linguist, I led literacy in a number of schools as well as having editorship of a large whole school magazine used for marketing. I absolutely love writing and pride myself on getting the children I teach to feel the same way about it. Year on year pupils I've taught (and their parents) have consistently told me how they (or their child) went from hating English to loving it, and I'm on a mission to spread that impact and positivity about the written word further.
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I love teaching and sharing with the community, so if you are a teacher too, do click here for my wagolls for use with UKS2 and to read my thoughts/findings on education research and reform, in which I have a strong interest.
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On Writing
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When I write I am most in flow. I find writing intrinsically rewarding and I definitely experience a distorted sense of time as the term flow suggests. It's a kind of mindfulness. I find the act of writing incredibly powerful and stimulating.
I find writing challenging because writing is about being creative and critical at the same time and always striving for originality. I love words and I love how they can be crafted together to make the most clever description or to make the reader laugh out loud. Writing is an emotional act and the fact that a reader/writer relationship can be created from words on a paper is, for me, pretty wondrous.
I write for lots of reasons: to figure things out, to amuse myself and others, to inform, to teach, to entertain, for the challenge and satisfaction it brings - mostly for the love of it. I wrote diaries from the age of 7 and wrote my first 'novel' at 12 after being inspired by a wonderfully funny and talented English teacher.
I hope to do for other children what he did for me.
Parent Tweet
On Teaching
The best schools I've worked in have had a busy, chatty staffroom where happy teachers, passionate about their practice and the children they teach, share ideas, successes and failures. Teachers should be supported to learn and develop their curriculum knowledge and teaching craft and encouraged to work collaboratively towards school improvement, at every stage of their career. I prefer working with people who see teaching as a lifelong learning endeavour themselves, who don't believe they've cracked it because of the number of years under their belt because teaching is always changing. There is always something to learn and ways to develop, adjust and improve with each cohort. Experienced teachers are worth their weight in gold and a resource worth paying for in my opinion. They should bring that valuable wisdom to the table, but they should also embrace innovation and creativity with courage and excitement and mentor those new to the profession so that they don't end up leaving after 5 years! We need to keep great teachers and make this profession as attractive as it once was.
I love curriculum design and development and believe in teaching rich content and core skills via stimulating themes, high-quality resources and innovative projects. For me, a modern curriculum needs to offer ample opportunity for children to practise the 4Cs, to use technology and to consider their place in a global society. Moreover, schools have a crucial co-duty with parents to educate pupils in what it means to be a good human being.
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What the pupils think.....
Featured in the 2021 Periodic Table of UK Educators to Follow Today
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