Foreword from our CEO, Mary Palmer
Welcome to our new quarterly newsletter! In this publication we will bring you lots of brilliant news and updates from the Teaching Awards Trust and our work to celebrate and recognise excellence in education. This issue includes an interview with Dame Alison Peacock, teaching ‘Day in the Life’ videos, and a blog post on the importance of kindness in FE teaching.
The team here at the trust work really hard to ensure that we can shine a spotlight on the outstanding, life changing work that takes place in schools up and down the country, and that is why we are so thrilled that engagement in the Pearson National Teaching Awards and our Thank a Teacher campaign is increasing all the time. Entries into the awards are at an all-time high which is fantastic; although if you want to be in with a chance of winning this year then you MUST get your entry in by 12th March! It’s easy to enter, free and open to all UK schools, and the impact of winning can last a lifetime. But don’t just take our word for it, you can hear first-hand from some of our winners, in this newsletter, and in our testimonials. And our Thank a Teacher campaign is going from strength to strength with over 45,000 thank you messages sent last year, and exciting plans in development for this year’s Thank a Teacher Day in June, watch this space for more updates on that!
I also think that our mission to celebrate and thank teachers (that we’ve been focused on for the last 21 years 😊) has particularly resonated in recent times given the impact that lockdown has had on the nation – parents becoming home schoolers themselves – and lockdown has really highlighted the vital role that teachers and schools play in enabling the whole country to function, and to transform the lives of those most disadvantaged in our society, so that is one positive to come out of this pandemic.
And we also couldn’t do what we do without the support of you wonderful people reading this newsletter and the contributions from our award winning teachers and colleagues, so thanks so much for that too.
For me, and all our team, including our hugely supportive board member and judges, it is a pleasure to do what we do; to ensure that the hard work and commitment of teaching and school support staff is recognised, acknowledged, respected and rewarded, and to see the increasing support for our work makes it all worthwhile. So do please enter the awards, say thank you to a teacher or school today and enjoy this first edition of our newsletter.
-Mary Palmer
