Seo

I was born in Reading and grew up just south of Winchester attending St Swithun’s School.

I took Chemistry, Biology and German for A-Levels and then achieved my Chemistry and Pharmacology BSc Hons from the University of Liverpool. After working for Novartis as a scientist, I transferred to scientific recruitment, where I successfully ran my own recruitment desk of 30 staff for Oil and Gas companies across the world.

I retrained in 2010 and became a Science teacher, specialising in Chemistry and Biology with my teaching degree (PGCE) from The University of Manchester.

After 5 years of working in Manchester I relocated to Shanghai. I have now taught in Shanghai, Jakarta, Singapore and recently moved back to the UK. I have taught KS3, GCSE (AQA, OCR and Edexcel), A-Level (Edexcel, International A-Level (Edexcel), AQA and CIE and IB (SL and HL).

I have 14 years of teaching experience in a school setting to 1000s of students. I am highly literate in A-Level and IB in particular having a fantastic record of high achieving students at the Level 7 and A* end.

I have just finished working for one of the top schools in Asia, Tanglin Trust School, and they have enrolled me in the NPQSL for Leadership training for Assistant Head level. I have led staff for 5 years within teaching, as well as pre-teaching in my recruitment days, but what I enjoy most is helping students learning and working to improve wellbeing and scientific literacy, as well as scaffolding the process for higher achievement.

Most of my students have attended Oxford/Cambridge as well as Russell Group Universities. I also take great joy in helping those who wish to pursue a more hands on University experience as well into courses across Europe and Asia.

Due to my previous career I am a confident speaker and enjoy giving presentations. That be said I am a great believer that children can smell passion, just as much as fear! Therefore I try and steer away from PowerPoint presentations and prefer to use visual aids and a bit of drama to get pupils to understand difficult concepts in a more visual and kinaesthetic ways. I am focussed in my perseverance for pupil’s attainment.

I particularly enjoy working with pupils from Year 10 upwards, especially sharing the happiness of them achieving their dream of attending their University of choice. I can think of many times over the years that students have shared with me their joy of getting into their chosen University, feeling like I have helped in this goal is the reason I still do this job. My favourite moments are often helping students understand tricky concepts or things they find hard to learn; we all find these things challenging and I feel this resilience is a life skill, one that is a pleasure to teach others.

I am known to take great pride in creating my resources. They are my own, used and perfected from the classroom experience. I have a reputation for my hatred of worksheets! Students of mine get bespoke resources and lots of practice and explanation. When the time is right, I have lots of past papers to aid their understanding and to test their application of concepts: a challenge that is particularly needed at A-Level and IB level.

One of my students last year achieved the highest mark in the world for Chemistry IGCSE. I was incredibly proud of her and the small part I played for her to achieve this. I have a saying in my classroom that I am the icing and the student is the cake - sometimes the icing needs to be thicker in places than others! This student achieved her outcome due to hard work and diligence, something I hope I played a part in, during her IGCSE journey.

I have spent the last 8 years working for some of the best schools in Asia including my last school Tanglin Trust School. I enjoy finding out what makes a student tick and using those interests to help students find their interest in Science.

I enjoy spending time with my family and traveling across SE Asia. I am a keen photographer, sewer and plant parent- although mostly they have a habit of being my accidental experiments!