by Emma Lewry @LewryEmma 'People are the most important thing to you,' said a close colleague and friend the day after I handed in my notice for my most recent Headship. 'Errrr, yes, clearly' I thought! Why did I not understand this about myself, or know how utterly vital it is for me to thrive? It took 18 months in a job, that I let st...
#WomenEd Blogs
by Christine Bellchambers @dorsetsbl Having submitted my MEd dissertation a little over a year ago, I can now reflect on just how much I enjoyed the learning process. There is no denying that some parts were extremely difficult, and I will not be overly concerned if I never have to write about or understand research methodologies ...
By Julie Hunter @MsHMFL I gave a talk at a #WomenEd conference in January 2022 and only came across my slides again recently. With the background of leaders suffering from accountability measures in England, now seemed like the perfect time for me to put my presentation into a blog. I'd like to credit the beautiful image below to the ...
by Vivienne Porritt @ViviennePorritt
We started WomenEd because women's voices on twitter were often silenced, harrassed or our views were not valued. It's one of the reasons we included a mic in our logo. So we encouraged women to tweet and to write blogs to tell our stories and share our lived experience.
One of the reasons we wrote 10%braver: Inspiring Women to Lead Education was to ensure the voices of our community reached women who are not on twitter. And over 30 voices are included in Being 10% Braver which, joyously, is published this December - you can pre-order and it's a great Christmas present! And we are delighted to share more opportunities for our community to write and to be heard.
By Nicola Mooney @nicksnook Network Leader @WomenEdSW This blog post is about something that is very important to me. I have 4 sons ranging from 3-16, I work full time, and am hoping to become a secondary headteacher in the future. I am writing this blog while son #3 (aged 6) is at a bowling birthday party, and #4 (aged 3) is playi...
By Nicola Mooney @nicksnook Network Lead @WomenedSW 2020, what a year. Surely 2021 can only be easier?12 months later, I hear myself again…..2021, what a year. Most of this is related to the fact that we have lived and educated through COVID, but for me this period has been an incredible journey of self discovery. Actually, that isn't e...
by Jules Daulby @JulesDaulby #PledgeForChange20
He ran at us aggressively. His arms spread out wide and he was roaring loudly. A moment of fear for us until he stopped inches from our faces and then he walked away, laughing with his friends.I was with my daughters (aged 11 and 14) on the 22nd December in Canterbury.
by @DorsetSBM #Pledgeforchange20
In September 2018 I ventured back into full time work for the first time in 15 years by taking on the Financial Business Manager (FBM) role in a school where I had been doing maternity cover in finance. The timing was right, for a change, as my youngest son was about to start middle school and would be getting a bus at 8am and not be home until 4pm; the years of doing the school run were over so now to replace it with more time spent at work!
by Nicola Mooney @nicksnook
When I entered teaching I was told that there is never anything new in education, that on a cyclical basis everything goes round again. I have now done a complete cycle.
by Nicola Mooney @nicksnook
I was reading through Twitter posts the other day about the possibility of holding down a full time teaching (or even leadership) post and winning at the parenting thing. It got me thinking about the sentence ‘having it all’ – as if managing to do both brings some sort of glorified sense of satisfaction that you can get from having a career and having a bunch of mini me’s running around……. and maybe there is.
by Lucy Hemsley @CheltTeacher #BirthdayCelebration
I do not over-exaggerate when I say reading 10%Braver changed my life: it dramatically changed how I view myself and my career. I wrote about the book when I first read it. But the book was just the beginning of my relationship with #WomenEd.
This is what #WomenEd has done for me.
by Susan Strachan @SusanSEnglish #BirthdayCelebration
Tonight on 18th May, , I met virtually with 300 other women to listen, learn, reflect and be inspired by a plethora of strong women, who are not afraid to have their voices heard. Some of these women know what it can be like to have the guilt of not doing enough or being enough. They banish that guilt (No 3 in the tips from Zara, @zssnas) or remind themselves that they are enough.
It gave me hope. Hope that this guilt will be banished for good. Not only from myself, but from my own daughter and every other female that I come into contact with, not only in my professional life, but in my personal life too.
by Megan Brown @mbhistory
Anyone entering the teaching profession will have been asked the question ‘Why do you want to be a teacher?’. You are almost guaranteed to get asked it at an interview for a place on a teacher training course, and it should be the easiest to answer. Yet, when I sat down to plan for my interview I found myself struggling to articulate one. This shouldn’t have been the case: I have wanted to be a teacher my whole life. I just couldn’t find the right words to express why.
by Claire Nicholls @bristol_teacher
In the @WomenEdBookclub chat led by Angie Browne (@nourishedteacher) on Layla F. Saad’s ‘Me and White Supremacy’ workbook, we discussed key learning, silence and complicity, the discomfort of white privilege and how feminism neglects Black women and other women of colour. My reflections on this were very personal and made me realise how far I’ve come on the journey of anti-racism but crucially, how far I’ve got left to go.
by Nicola Mooney @nicksnook
This is a short reflective blog on why standing together is important.
One year ago today I received this message:
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