Sarah Hazell

My learning biography

Throughout Primary and Secondary school I had always been considered as high achieving, but sadly only very few classes had extra work for me to complete, and as a result I always felt unchallenged and slowly lost motivation for all aspects of education. I was also an extremely quiet and shy kid which meant that I would never ask for help if I was stuck and I wouldn’t easily speak up in class, even when I had a strong contribution to make. The rare times that I had worked up the courage to put up my hand I was usually ignored or went unnoticed by the teacher as other kids would speak up first: the only classes that I enjoyed and succeeded in were ones where the teacher had a ‘raise your hand before you speak’ policy.  When I moved to a new college in a new area this situation had got to its worst. Being in a new place without knowing anyone seemed to make me more nervous than I ever had been. I struggled to take harsh criticism from my English teacher and started to stop working whenever she stood over my shoulder for fear of writing something wrong. In my Art class I couldn’t find graphite to do some drawings in my sketchbook but was too scared to ask the teacher where it was: she always seemed so busy. When I finally plucked up the courage to ask her she declared that I should already know where everything is and that she had lots of people to deal with. After that I went back to my seat and sat completely frozen. The teacher couldn’t get any response from me and couldn’t get me to do any drawings. The next week a meeting was called with my personal tutor and my mum.

At the meeting I sat silent while they told me that I had reports from all my teachers claiming that they struggled to get me to do any work in class. I had been catching up at home but hadn’t been working in class. My art teacher was particularly worried. My personal tutor was incredibly patient during the meeting and I eventually told them that I felt incredibly uncomfortable during class, especially in English and Art. After this long meeting my personal tutor told me she was going to talk to my Art and English teacher. I really respect that my Art teacher tried extremely hard to get me to love Art again. She asked me to come to the art room in one of my free lessons and gave me a tour of the room, so that I definitely knew where all the resources were and could get on with my work. She suggested that I started coming in extra during my free lessons to catch up on missed work as the room was quieter then. When I started coming in during those times she would sit and sketch with me and chat to me so she could fix the broken relationship that we had started off with. By my second year in Art I was flourishing and had developed a clear passion for the subject. My confidence had increased a huge amount.

The main reason I want to teach is that I want to inspire people and unlock hidden passions for art. I have learned from my experiences in education that being a good teacher is about helping people grow as individuals and unlocking their potential rather than trying to get everyone to ace the class. I also want to make sure that people have good experiences of education, and I want to help people grow in confidence. I also want to make sure students don’t have the same bad experiences that I did. As I went from an extremely shy person who was unmotivated to a confident and independent person with a passion for art in a short space of time, I know that anyone can do anything that they put their minds to, and I want to help students realise and achieve this.