The Teacher in You
Evadne Bygrave
hosted our recent webinar offering support to parents struggling to home school in what we hope will be one of the last lockdowns that will involve children being kept out of school.
The current pandemic has caused major disruptions to the lives of each and every one of us, not just in the UK, but all over the world. But one of the main casualties of this pandemic is children losing out on education and the increasing pressures imposed on parents to be teachers, often whilst holding down another full time job.
This webinar was created, to empower parents by raising their confidence to enable them to support their children through home schooling. Parents have a natural ability to teach and the key objective was to give parents a safe space to explore and develop this instinctive skill.
To get everyone started on this line of thought, Evadne carried out an exercise with attendees to get them thinking about what things they had already taught their children. This helped raised their awareness of how they had already been teaching their children, in a wide variety of ways already, and drawing attention to the creative ways we teach without even realising it.
Parents then had a chance to talk in smaller breakout rooms about the challenges they had and the ways they had already overcome many of the problems along the way. This gave them a chance to share experiences and fill in the gaps they still had.
Some of the ideas that came out of the discussions were:
Routine is key, everyone agreed on this.
Everyone has different experiences of on-line learning. Some people are working, some people are available all day. Some schools have a daily on-line timetable, other schools don’t.
Home schooling this time round is a little easier than the first time. Parents and schools are more prepared, and have better solutions, such as ‘Live Lessons’.
Social media, gaming time and device management is harder than ever as this is children’s only social connection with their peers and the outside world.
Creative ideas for tackling the curriculum, you know your child best so use you sense of humour when things get tough – for example, interview your phone and write a newspaper article or story about it; create a comprehension based on their favourite film.
Hayley Nicholas then shared her moving story on the challenges of accessing support for SEN children and how parents might get round these challenges and access the support their children desperately need, in order to access education. All local authorities have an obligation to provide information about how you can access SEN information in your area. Here is an example from Hertfordshire below.
Accessing SEN support links:
One of the themes that came out of the discussion was children’s mental health, and the support available to parents and their children. We have shared some links below.
Children’s mental health links:
Schools in Mind is a free network for school staff and allied professionals which shares practical, academic and clinical expertise regarding the wellbeing and mental health issues that affect schools.
This is for you if you volunteer, work or are studying to work with infants, children, teenagers or adults. MindEd has e-learning applicable across the health, social care, education, criminal justice and community settings. It is aimed at anyone from beginner through to specialist.
Wiltshire Early Mental Health Service, run by Barnardo’s. This website has lots of practical tips and advice about supporting children and young people’s mental health focusing on a range of different subjects.
Information about the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
Angelique Vassel founder of Walk With Me gave a short presentation on the work her organisation is doing to rebuild and strengthen family relationships using a non-violent resistant approach.
You can find out more about Angelique Vassel and her work at:
and email her at info@walkwithmeuk.co.uk
You may also find some of these links useful:
We hope you find this summary useful, if you would like to know about other webinars that will help during these times please have a look here:
The Steve Sinnott Foundation • February 9, 2021
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
