It is my privilege to be the Principal of Rodillian Academy, a position that I took up in 2014, after joining the school as an Assistant Head in 2008 and subsequently promoted to Deputy Head. Prior to this I had been the Head of English in a large comprehensive school in Nottingham and in my 24 years in the profession I have taught Drama, Media Studies and, of course, English and I am pleased to say that I continue to teach English at Rodillian Academy.

In my time at Rodillian I have been involved in developing the curriculum to meet the needs of our young people. We felt that it was imperative that we innovated within our curriculum to create confident, motivated and successful learners with the skills to help them be successful academically and to equip them with the skills for life. Thus, the Resilience curriculum was introduced. Resilience lessons develop self-confidence through developing presentation skills and team work, mastery of skills through purposeful practise, such as playing the ukulele and speaking French, which many think they are unable to do, promoting high standards of work through redrafting and editing, good learning habits through learning about the memory and revision techniques, and self-belief through their understanding of the brain. We take our young people on Resilience Camp in the UK at the start of Year 7 and Resilience Camp France as they graduate into Year 8. I am extremely proud of our rugby and netball academies which have been highly successful across all year groups in competitions. Their motto: Resilience.