Amanda
My Passion & How I Inspire
I attend to each student with interest and understanding, creating a non-judgemental supportive space for us to discover, invent, experiment and evaluate creative methods and approaches to learning in keeping with their sensibility and temperament. This free form, gently held, safely supportive space is a new experience for many of my students where schools rarely have the time or the interest to listen, perceive and respond individually to their needs. Each student is met with curiosity as to their unique way of doing things and with a passion to assist in the discovery of their approach and facilitate its application. This interest and facilitation with each students way of doing things not only achieves high grads but also infuses them with a love of learning and an awareness of their own mind and the how to reach their potential.
With all my students I implicitly believe in their ability to overcome difficulties with their subjects and learning more generally, difficulties are often the consequence of not having been met with interest and understanding as to ‘how’ they work. The ‘how’ permeates the way I work with each student. Addressing ‘how’ each student learns allows for a bespoke and nuanced approach to every area of life and studies. For example time management is necessary for success when studying a range of different subjects all with different demands and deadlines. Time, from my point of view, is considered a material that is uniquely felt and experienced. Rather than working with imposed or standardised approaches to time I work with each student and we learn together their particular relationship with time and then create and develop visual, spatial and physical ways of relating to it in a way that makes sense to them. This degree of specificity is the way I approach every area of my students working life – which connects up with and has an impact on all areas of their life. We discover together how exactly they work best to process and understand information. For some students it might be coloured pens, writing and large sheets of paper, for others it might be cutting things up and physically constructing diagrams and charts, for others it might be creating songs and stories, visually mapping journeys.
At the outset of work with students they often feel overwhelmed, lacking in confidence, disengaged in learning, shut down and indifferent to the wonders of their subjects. Through our time together I have witnessed a reverse of these states, confidence grows, learning becomes interesting, they become curious, self aware and self initiating as to how to go about tasks, they learn how to cope when overwhelmed– a true blossoming occurs.
