Teaching Dynasties
Teaching Awards winner Natalie Richards with students from Bishop Gore Comprehensive School, Swansea
More evidence that teaching runs in families - and that parents who are teachers don't always deter their offspring - emerged at several ceremonies this year.
Natalie Richards, winner of the SSAT Award for Outstanding New Teacher of the Year in Wales, paid tribute to her parents and her husband who are all teachers. From the stage at Cardiff City Hall she said: 'To my pupils, my Year 8 form and my Year 11 students who are here today, thank you so, so much. And to my parents and my husband who've supported me the whole way in becoming a teacher.'
At the South of England ceremony Kerry Scargill, winner of the Teaching Award for Enterprise said: 'I'd like to thank my mum who was a teacher and who is here today.' In the North East, Sarah Buckham, winner of the TDA award for Teaching Assistant of the Year works as a PE technician and has a sister training to be a PE teacher, just like her.
If further evidence of the 'teaching gene' is needed, Paul Keogh, chair of the North regional panel of judges and Secondary Teacher of the Year in 2003, has two brothers in the profession. Their father, now in his 80s, was a headteacher.
And there are the Bennett brothers: David, a UK winner in 2001 who teaches in Leicester and Michael, a winner in Northern Ireland in 2005. Attending the 2008 tenth anniversary summit in April they remembered the influence of their father, a chemistry teacher at Sedburgh school in North Yorkshire where all five of his sons were boarders.
'The thing we learned from Dad was that whatever you do, you take pride in it and do the best you can. Mum was the same,' said David. 'Like him, we love our subjects but our motivation really comes from working with young people and being in a community with them,' said Michael. Their three other brothers are all in public service: a doctor, youth worker and pastor respectively.
