Teaching is about empowering communities as much as it is about developing the individual student. Schools are the bedrock of society, influencing the development of whole generations of young people in a particular community.
Liverpool Hope University instils that sense of responsibility in trainee teachers, with scores of graduates continuing to positively affect young lives in the north-west and Northern Ireland, where there are a significant number of alumni.
Many more do the same farther afield and, whether they take their training to schools down the road or around the world, that community ethos prevails, as these two Liverpool Hope graduates can attest to …
‘Life in Doha is unbelievable’
It’s a long way from Merseyside to Qatar, but her time at Liverpool Hope made Amy Tyrrell ready to make that journey. The 21-year-old, from Kirby, Liverpool, said she chose to train at Liverpool Hope because it “stood out for the community it built” and because, from her first visit, every person made her feel so welcome.
She studied BA QTS (qualified teacher status) in primary education with a specialism in special educational needs and disabilities (Send) and says she benefited from fantastic facilities and supportive tutors during her three-year course.
She will always remember the “feeling of accomplishment” when she completed her final placement. “To hear the positive feedback from tutors and mentors was amazing after all the support that had been given to us to help us become the teachers we would be graduating and qualifying as,” she adds.
That nurturing vibe continued even as she applied for jobs. “The tutors were so supportive in the whole process and brought in experts for mock interviews and personal statement writing, to ensure we were fully prepared and confident for this process,” she says.
It worked: she is now teaching a year 3 class in Newton international school, Lagoon, Doha. Life in the Qatari capital is “unbelievable”, says Tyrrell. “The community built not only in the school, but in Doha itself, is fantastic. People are happy to help, there is a much better work-life balance and there are so many opportunities to delve into other cultures.”
Describing this balance as the best aspect of teaching abroad, she explains: “The whole process is so easy, and the school is really organised in terms of keeping on top of planning and marking, ensuring we as staff are OK, and for appreciating the work that we put in to support the children in their academic journey.”
The focus placed at Liverpool Hope on Philosophy for Children (P4C), an approach to learning in which children take part in philosophical inquiry, has been worth its weight in gold for Tyrrell, because it’s a topic they also focus on in Doha.
She also appreciates the chance to meet new people in her new home. “As we get older, people struggle to make new connections and moving abroad was definitely a great opportunity for this,” she says.
In the classroom, Tyrrell loves creating a family environment through a connection with her pupils. Drawing on her experiences at Liverpool Hope, she strives to always be “someone the children feel confident around and feel safe around”. Making a difference to a child’s life is “amazing”, she says, and although working with “25 children with different personalities and abilities can be challenging”, when one of them turns to her and says: “Miss, I finally understand it” or “Miss, I am so proud of myself”, that moment is “so rewarding”, she says.
‘I can send out ripples of positivity’
Teaching is “the most humbling profession you can ever do”, says Liverpool Hope graduate Colin Hartley, who teaches business studies and computer science at Halewood academy in Liverpool. “There’s always a child who’s had a rougher morning than you’ve had, but you can be the one who turns their day around.”
He says the school he teaches at is in one of the most deprived boroughs of the UK and includes pupils from “really, really challenging backgrounds”, who “might have had the worst weekend” at home. “But you always have that opportunity to put a smile on their face, which in turn will then put a smile back on your face.”
Before he decided to go into teaching, Hartley kept being told he would be a “good fit” for the profession. He chose to train at Liverpool Hope University because it has a “really good employment rate” and friends who had trained there had gone on to become “really successful”.
To this day, when he meets anyone who trained at Liverpool Hope their “face lights up” when they talk about their time there and what it did for them. He lights up himself as he explains how Liverpool Hope helped him develop the resilience needed to teach.
“No job is as fast-paced emotionally as teaching, but the thing you learn at Liverpool Hope is to get back to basics and keep your temperament in check,” he says. “They told us to remember that you’re the expert and you’re in charge. So when things get tough, you should take stock of the moment and recognise you’re bigger than the moment.”
Hartley admits that teaching is not for the faint-hearted, but he loves how it gives him the chance to send ripples of positivity into the world.
“If you make a difference with one pupil, that might benefit the younger siblings they’re caring for at home, and might even benefit their parents, who they’re sometimes caring for too,” he says. “It could also help the families they will build themselves in the future.”
Remembering how the ethos of Liverpool Hope is etched into every inch of its being, he describes it as “an institution like no other”. With a smile, he adds: “You can’t really leave because you always feel a part of it.”
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