Audit of Prior Experience

I’m proud to say that my experience working with children and professional experience that can apply to the classroom setting is substantial. I have grown up in a family of foster-carers; volunteered at several youth camps including one in America, I have an intensive year’s experience working in a boarding school and two degrees in the subject I will teach. Here I will detail how each of these experiences can apply to and give insight to working with children as an educator.

Throughout my life I have had the great pleasure being an older brother and carer to almost a hundred foster siblings. The visceral fulfilment I have found, supporting and encouraging them in their development, ignited my passion to work in education. Especially from the fulfilment achieved when encouraging, supporting and connecting with them through art. I am eager to embark on this PGCE in Art and Design to further develop my skills and make a positive impact on the next generation of Artists and Designers.

Because this has been a part of my life growing up, the effective safeguarding of children has always been constant and important concern of mine and I have a wealth of experience working with children with SEN. This experience has taught me patience and an understanding of how to support children with SEN such as down-syndrome, ADHD, Autism, anxiety and trauma.

I have also volunteered as a leader for a few years at various youth camps. This was my first experience leading a group of children and being responsible for them. After doing this for a few years, I became more comfortable with leadership skills and in 2019 I volunteered to be a leader (or Camp Counsellor) over the summer at a Camp America-style camp in Florida. Here, I was responsible 24/7, providing hospitality, education and supervision for children aged ten to eighteen. This experience was valuable to me as I learned to be comfortable in a leadership position and how to respond to safeguarding concerns, such as reporting information provided in confidence, fulfilling a duty of care and

I have completed a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art (First class) and a master’s degree of Research in the Arts (Distinction), earning the highest award for each. Knowledge of the subject you will teach is an essential characteristic for any effective educator, it demonstrates the breadth of the professional’s expertise and reflects the interest of the subject to the students. These degrees also taught me additional skills which would apply well to the classroom setting, such as time management, giving presentations investigating a subject to a wide variety of audiences at once, research, academic writing skills and the ability to critique artworks in insightful & constructive ways. On this last point, in the final year of my bachelor’s degree, my senior tutor confirmed to me that they had often paired me in groups with difficult students because they knew they could rely on me to bring out the artistic voice of students that struggled more, even calling me ‘the king of critique’ which was a great compliment. I am content that I developed this skill to encourage students of all ability, and I will surely take this forward into my professional career as an art educator.

Finally, the experience from which I have learned the most, has been this past year intensively working in a Boarding School in Hastings. Here I was working long hours every day, as a Resident Tutor and Housemaster.

The intensity and enormity of the work allowed me a wealth of experience working with students aged 11 to 19 and developed key qualities of educational work, such as leadership, time-management, responsibility, discipline, positive framing, memory, communication, safeguarding, pastoral support and culturing a network of positive working relationships with all departments of a school environment.

Through the school, I received constant training and achieved 15 TES training certificates for awareness and support of students as well as a workplace first aid certificate and positive handling training.

I gained experience planning and leading school trips, responsible for up to 40 students at a time, I was even entrusted to help plan and lead an international Ski-trip to Spain. Additionally, I planned and facilitated school events, activities and charity fundraisers.

I gained classroom experience, volunteering for the academic side of the school in my spare time, teaching a group of boys PSHE as well as teaching guitar twice a week and occasionally supervising art lessons.

In this workplace I stood out from my colleagues through the excellence of my communication. My excellent recall and detail of any given incident aided the DSL team and medical office, my incredibly detailed and concise emails ensured clear records of events, actions and reasoning behind professional decisions, in line with the policies of the school, such that they could be communicated clearly to parents, and examined by senior management.

The excellence of my communication led to me being depended on, by one of the principals, to de-escalate sensitive accusations from parents made towards the school’s senior management team. Also, I was depended on to write emails on behalf of the school by the headmaster and by co-workers to advise on professional email communications.

Most importantly, I developed confidence in pastoral work with students within an educational setting. This included talking to students about their behaviour, encouraging and celebrating their successes and supporting them with their academic skills.

Overall, the experience gained this year is tremendously important, I can see how much I have developed as a professional from this work and I will take these lessons and virtues forward with me into all future endeavours within work in education.