Karen Chappell
Teaching Awards 2008 Winner
The BT Award for Teacher of the Year in a Primary School in London
St Thomas CE Primary School, LONDON
When Karen Chappell’s pupils studied ‘The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe’, they found themselves entering the classroom through a wardrobe placed in front of the door, into a magical, scary kingdom peopled with strange characters (staff dressed up). Another time they had to plan and carry out a trip across London to the London Dungeon to collect certain facts and items. Their group leaders stayed silent and could only intervene as a last resort.
Then there was the literacy lesson where pupils had to persuade people to buy a new computer game…and GREECE, The Musical, set in Acropolis High.
Karen is an exciting, innovative teacher who has embraced the new creative and theme-based primary school curriculum with gusto.
She teaches by coaxing and encouragement and all her pupils make outstanding progress, most jumping one whole level of achievement, during their year in her care. Pupils say her lessons are fun and she is always “firm, but fair.”
Her teaching assistants praise the way she motivates children, and parents say she knows all their children individually.
Karen is currently teaching from a temporary Portakabin while building works take place, but has turned her makeshift classroom into a bright and stimulating haven.
She is the school’s teacher governor, and the school’s literacy coordinator, as well as supporting new teachers and helping lead school trips. Her head, Sarah Bouette, describes her as “the lifeblood of the school.”
Outside school she is a lead teacher for the borough, helping to train and mentor other teachers, and has also developed an 'Into University' project with a local community church, which aims to promote high expectations for pupils' future ambitions.
In her free time she loves travelling, but even then work is never far from her mind. While in Australia recently she gave herself the new challenge of teaching in an Aboriginal school.
