Photography teacher
After becoming a parent in my early twenties I went back to Uni to study for a BA Hons in Visual and Media Arts. The practicalities of family life led to a PGCE in Art and I found myself teaching general Art and A’ Level Photography in a mainstream school for the next 17 years. Initially creative and rewarding, the changes wrought in standard education and the imposition of so many targets, ‘performance indicators’ and scrutiny of all, lead me to feel I was working for an exams factory and I took early retirement.
I had attended occasional Sands School camps (I am married to Peach!) and gained an understanding of the school’s ethos. During the COVID-19 pandemic I was available to step in to teach Art with an ex-colleague (Mark) for the year whilst things settled down. I introduced some photography which proved popular and has now become a time-tabled GCSE subject for the older groups. It is important that young people have an understanding of the codes, conventions and contexts that surround the ubiquitous use of photographic images in our society and studying the subject can be enlightening and also helps them ‘notice’ things. My own artistic endeavours now lean towards the ‘crafty’, using old analogue photographic and darkroom processes to make visual work and growing organic flowers both fresh and dried for creating and making.
