I am a teacher of History with 35 years of experience at all the key stages and at degree level. I retired nine years ago, but cannot keep away from the profession I love. I am an enthusiast for History - it really is the most important subject on the curriculum - and have become highly knowledgeable in most areas of Modern History covered by examination boards. I have even tutored a student in the "Age of Charlemagne", an education for both of us, but utterly enthralling. History fills most of my leisure reading and I have worked to keep up to date in my subject areas.  I favour a relaxed and open climate for learning, providing my students with clear learning tasks and targets, and with differentiated activities which promote their active participation in their own learning and allow them to make appropriate progress with clearly targeted feedback. I regard praise, rewards and good humour as essential to ensuring pupils feel safe and confident, and to encourage progress. I can offer tuition at GCSE and GCE level and am familiar with the particular demands of the Edexcel and OCR curricula. I have also been an associate examiner, or marker,  for Edexcel for many years. this means that I know agreat deal about what examiners expect from students and the examination skills needed to do well.

About Me

I was born in Birmingham and went to King Edward's Grammar School, Aston, and on to Pembroke College, Oxford, to take a degree in History. After graduating, I opened a book shop in Oxford. it was great fun, but I came to believe that i could do more, so took a PGCE in History at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1984. My family moved north seeking opportunity, and after some tribulation, including months processing chickens at the Buxted plant in Ripon, I began three years teaching part time at Leeds Polytechnic. Seeking full time work, I moved into secondary education and have taught A level History since 1992, when the first task I was given by my Subject Leader was to write a handout on the causes of the Great Depression, a topic completely new to me. I had less than a week, but it went well enough for me to become Subject Leader myself from 2008 to 2013, when I retired. Since then, I have taught both full and part time in schools and a Sixth Form college, and recently, as a tutor. I have contined to work as an associate examiner for Edexcel, each summer.  I love music and will paint in arty, if inept fashion, anything around my house. I have two feisty bull terriers, Bootsie and Kiki, who provide me with a good deal of exercise, and chewing. 

Services

My approach is a personalised one. At our initial meeting, I will develop a learning agreement based on what the student identifies as their strengths and weaknesses, the outcome towards which they are working and the time frame in which to achieve it. Our sessions will include resources and opportunities for assessment with immediate feedback and we can modify and develop the way we use tutor time as our tutorial relationship develops. I use a variety of learning strategies including the traditional power points and handouts, but also like to use card sorts, role play, Youtube clips and recordings - whatever works for the student's learning style. I aim for intense yet interesting sessions after which the student feels that they have learned and understood more that they did before. Our sessions will focus, as required by my student, on the key features and events of History and how they are linked with key features of society in the period studied.  We will explore the nature and processes of change - patterns, trends, turning points and impacts - similarities and differences over time, the understanding and evaluation of sources, and the analysis of later interpretations. These are the assessment objectives of all the examination boards. I also hope to inspire a student with my own enthusiasm for History and the opportunities it offers for empathy, the willingness to become absorbed in the past as one would in a great novel. It's all very exciting!