Gursimen

Certified Tutor

am deeply passionate about teaching and working with young people. My beliefs in education are that all students should be exposed to a culture of 'no limits'. This means I have high expectations of every student; however, I am aware that due to backgrounds, ability and needs they will take a different route to achieve these. Students should be heard and learned from, which encourages them to take a vital role in their education. I place a key importance in ensuring all students are exposed to a way of independent thinking. I consider myself to be someone who can easily engage and motivate students, teachers and parents in a way that is open and supportive. I understand the importance, and impact, the role of Teacher of Maths entails. I am looking forward to the opportunity to be able to use my expertise to bring highly effective and proven ideas to the role.
I have been a member of the Maths department at Future Academies Watford for 4 years and during that time I have successfully developed many of my teaching and learning skills. During my second year of teaching I was asked to undertake I was asked to undertake the responsibility of Key Stage 5. I was thrilled for this opportunity, however as it was so close to the exam dates I had to ensure that I was fully prepared before meeting my first Year 13 class. In order to do this, I had to; create my own scheme of work, get to know students, create online resources for them to access and create exams for their TAG's (Teacher assessed grades). Due to the exams being cancelled, during Covid, I had the responsibility of deciding what to assess students on and of creating my own assessments, mark schemes and grading boundaries. Working as the sole teacher responsible for Key Stage 5 taught me a lot about what is required to successfully run a key stage. I had to be adaptable with ideas I employed, and was independent with finding success that worked for me and the year groups. I created a scheme of work for students to identify topics they were taught well and then identify those they were confident in. From these I was able to incorporate this in my planning, and specify which content I needed to target for each student.
I was also responsible for ensuring this was done for the Year 12's who had their exams the following year. I have had the pleasure of taking part in the initiating of maths mastery in our department. This way of teaching I was very familiar with due to my training taking place in a school part of the maths hub, St Marylebone. Due to this experience I was able to bring it to our maths department to assist with our departmental workshop meetings. I had taken it upon me to assist with others in department who needed support with planning and delivering. I feel since then we have come very far as a department in the way we share resources and ideas, and discuss the mathematics required and especially misconceptions. It is a joy being part of a department that has become so collaborative with ideas and discussions, and has developed my teaching skills.
During my first year of teaching I felt I required some more training in delivering certain aspects of maths. I was given the opportunity to participate in the PTI (Prince's Trust Institute) programme and it developed my teaching skills. The course took place over four sessions and for the last meeting we were asked to create a sequence of lessons relating to what we had learnt. I sent lessons relating to developing in depth knowledge of Pythagoras's Theorem and was delighted to receive a response that my presentation was of such a high standard they would like me to present it to the rest of the group. This gave me the ability to also share my presentation with the rest of my department.
Building students' awareness of the learning process of maths is something that I have been able to develop over my years of teaching. I have understood, especially with lower ability groups, the fear students' have when approaching maths problems and I address this in all of my lessons. I place a high importance in my class of allowing mistakes in order for them to feel it is a safe environment to do so. I believe overcoming this fear of making mistakes makes students more confident to approach the subject. I place a high importance of addressing anxiety students have in relation to maths and overcoming this ensures the learning process is much more positive. My students are aware of the importance of maths, not only in the class and for exams, but in their daily lives. They understand how vital it is due to the importance I place on involving cultural capital with my teaching. The impact of this ensures that students are much more involved with learning and I would like the opportunity to bring this to the department I will work in.
I believe that comprehension of maths is a vital ingredient to a child's success. It is also incredibly vital to a student's education and development in every subject, including maths, and plays a significant role in supporting a successful life beyond the classroom. I have found that when a student is positively focused on improvement and on creating something of value where they have a personal and emotional investment the learning is enhanced. This is done through positive reinforcement, allowing creativity in the classroom and allowing students to be more responsible for learning.