With a stressful September ahead, mindfulness and compassion are and will be more and more essential to their teacher and pupil wellbeing. There are many techniques and strategies, available for all teachers to incorporate into their lessons and interactions throughout the day, which will ensure a whole-school positive approach in the coming months with many benefits for all. 

Whether there is a Pride group, or a similar support group, for the LGBTQ+ community in your school or not, there will be a number of LGBTQ + students in all Primary and Secondary schools. There are also LGBTQ+ teachers, whether they are out to their colleagues and/or students or not. 

My dream of teaching abroad in some capacity started at the age of 17, if not earlier, as I sat in an assembly watching images of school pupils in Africa and seeing how little they had. The speaker showed children talking about how much they wanted to go to school, teachers talking about doing their best and enjoying teaching the children, but knowing that they hadn’t had sufficient training to be able to help their pupils more.

I’ve always felt that good teachers are evident all the time, even outside of their classroom. It’s never a surprise, therefore, when I meet someone and can see immediately, even when they are not teaching, that they are or would make a good teacher. There is something about good teachers as human beings in general; how they interact, how they listen to people, how they give their time and eye contact to others, how they care about pupils’ wellbeing and potential.

It’s amazing that people are learning French on St Helena, especially with the islands Napoleonic links and the regular influx of French tourists wanting to see where Napoleon was exiled in 1815 and later died on the island in 1821. The language was consistently introduced to the English-speaking St Helena from September 2014, when Years 7-10 in the secondary school, Prince Andrew School started lessons within the set timetable following the British National curriculum. Since that time, French has also been introduced to the three Primary schools on the island, with years 3, 4, 5 and 6 accessing French lessons each week.