Faith Pepper

Faith is taking our accelerated BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies course, and aims to become a childcare teacher or a SENCO. She’s also been Course Rep for a year, and is standing for another.

Why did you choose to study at ARU?

I wanted a change. Before ARU, I went to Colchester Institute and did the T-Level Early Years Childcare, a two-year course with 750 hours of work placement, and I got my T level 3. They had the exact same course, but I didn't really want to stay at the same place. ARU gave me a chance to start somewhere fresh and be treated as an adult.

And why the Early Childhood Studies course?

I just wanted the Level 6 because other courses, they do the QTS during it. I didn't want QTS. I wanted to go on to do the PGCE and work with secondary school pupils and adults. So this was the only course that actually allowed me to just get the level 6.

What was the advantage of taking an accelerated course for you?

Well for me, I have to travel an hour to uni, and I didn't want to be doing that every single day. So the massive advantage is that we only go into uni once a month and the rest is online. We’ve got a Whatsapp group chat for the course, and we all talk most days. We also have the teams group chat with our teacher and my class on the blended course. We use this to ask questions and know what room we are in through teachers giving us updates. This feels like a community especially when studying online at home.

But I don't have other work, I just do the studying. Due to my own neurodiverginess, I need to focus on one thing.

What do you hope to do when you graduate from ARU?

There are so many different options once we get the level 6. Once I finish uni, I can be a teacher in a hospital or a teacher in prison. There's so much flexibility when you do education. I've got a lot of options. But right now, at my young age, I do want to be a teacher. But later on, I could be other things like a SENCO. I'd love to be a SENCO as I am passionate about learning disabilities and supporting others with neurodivergent experiences like myself.

In a secondary school, you have a SENCO, the main person in charge of all like 200 different disabilities in that school, and coordinating with the teachers. They know that Robert needs the green paper, Amelia needs yellow paper, or this person has a five-minute pass because they get anxious when it's busy in the corridor.

I'd love to be that person. I'm ADHD, dyslexic and probably autistic, so I feel like I'm probably the best person for it. I'm very relatable to them.

You must have personal experience of what it’s like to be a SEND pupil as well?

Yeah. When I was in school, a SENCO wasn't a thing. It only came out in 2018, at the start of my secondary school, so when I was in primary school, my learning disabilities got missed and went under the radar. We were just told “She's not going to be able to read, she's not going to be able to write. She's failing her milestones.” I found primary school mentally challenging because I wasn’t given the support I was needing therefore I failed all of my SATs and I lost confidence in my learning abilities due to my teachers calling me dumb.

My mum was a teacher, so she knew I had something. We had regular meetings with the Head of School at the time but nothing was happening to help and support my learning. But when I started secondary school and had to do Year 7 Spanish, I said, “If I can't read and write, why are you teaching me Spanish?” Then they clocked it and realised, “Ohh, she's dyslexic!”

I then did a screening test at school - this wasn’t the diagnosis itself, it was to analyse and observe me to see if there was a possibility that I could get diagnosed with dyslexia. When the screening results came back high we had two options: go through the NHS and risk it not being done by Year 9, or go private. My mum decided to go private, and I’m so very thankful as I had all of my reasonable adjustments set in stone for all of my mocks and exams.

The diagnosis itself took over 5 hours in a specialist dyslexic doctor's home. They were very lovely to me and very patient. It took so long as there are lots of different categories of dyslexic and turns out I have them all!

When you heard about the SENCO role, did you immediately think that was what you wanted to work towards?

I did, but then she showed me the paperwork and I thought “Oh, well I'll be a teacher first!” Because once you're a teacher in the Sigma Trust, you can get jobs offered before it goes public. When I heard about being a teacher and teaching child care I knew that’s what I wanted to do, but it’s the adjustment on how I will mark papers and identify spelling mistakes.

Did you always know that you wanted to get involved with education?

I was always sure I wanted to teach in secondary from an early age, like Year 8. I just knew I had a passion for the older mindset.

I feel like I'm very good with the little ones - I can do it all, but I also get really ill. So I decided I didn't really want to be dealing with the little ones, as you have to look after much more than just their learning. I decided I’d rather actually teach my knowledge so others can go and use it, then advance their knowledge later on.

What excited you about teaching in the first place?

At a very young age I was inspired by my mum throughout her teaching career. I remember us going to pick her up when I was about 4, and realising “Oh, you're a teacher. That's so cool!” She's done early years, she's done reception, and she's now teaching at a college. She's done it all.

But then I realised I wanted to teach childcare, probably at secondary or college. I feel like that excites me more! At college I was working towards the age range of 0-25. I was actually working for 0-5 years on placement. But then I also learnt about adults, and college students, and 0-25 neurodivergent people - their education is until 25. I learnt so much!

But at uni, we’re working with 0-8, and we're learning a lot about the milestones. And I really like learning about it, so I thought “I'm going to teach it one day.”

What's the most valuable thing you’ll take away from your course?

I really enjoyed the Creative Pedagogy: How Children Learn module. I made a massive tree as an activity plan poster for my bug house activity. Then I had to bring the tree to campus on the train, so that was really fun!

For the tree, I was learning about children’s outdoor learning, and I found that really interesting. Through Montessori, Forest Schools, scaffolding, Bowlby, Skinner - all the different theories that link to a child learning outdoors. When I did the activity in school lunchtime, it started out as three children making the bug house, and turned into 30 children doing a conveyor belt of passing a twig along to get to the bug house. I thought: “Oh my Gosh, this is chaos”, but it worked. It was organised chaos. It was amazing.

Which aspects of your course have most helped your career development, and why?

Well, in these two years of uni we’ve had 150 hours of placements. I thought, “Oh, that's easy. I can do that,” because in college we had 750 in two years! So I'm just doing mine every Thursday. We do three different age ranges in placement in total. I’ve done Nursery ( age 3-4 years) and Year 1 (5-6 years) then in January I’m doing Year 2 (6-7 years).

We've done a whole module on special needs, so that was really interesting, and I actually chose the Ruskin module called “What does it mean to be happy?” Because with autistic children, they might not be able to verbalise being happy. So I learned a lot from the creative side, and I learned a lot about the smile and its history. I thought that was really interesting because in the olden times royals were getting their paintings done and they were not smiling.

How much support have you had from ARU to help with your studies?

I get a mentor called Ben every Monday, from the Study Skills team. He helps me put my essays into the right academic structure. So I do get a lot of help because I chose to reach out to the neurodivergent team to add my disabilities onto my record. This then tells my teachers any reasonable adjustments that may help my learning more. I love Ben because he listens to me and is able to communicate really well through my dyslexia and ADHD.

What piece of advice would you give to other students in your field?

You need a lot of empathy. You need to have a lot of understanding of how to cooperate and adapt to pupil’s needs. You can't just be a SENCO because you're interested. You need to be a SENCO because you've got a heart of gold, because you've got that understanding and the knowledge of why a pupil is struggling. Not be like “Oh, he's just flipped the table, go tell him off.”

You need understanding of why he has flipped the table - is he okay? Is there anything going on at home? It can't just be one way. It's got to be around the roundabout, up and down, and through the loopy loop. That's how you need to be active with your brain. There's not always a simple way.

Additionally, when you want to be a teacher in a secondary school, don't give up. The reward is seeing the students thrive with their own life and our job is to help them by having faith in them.

What do you think of the Chelmsford campus when you have to go in?

I think it's lovely, I like the layout as it’s very open and free. While it’s an open site it also has very good security. I like seeing people just walking around as it feels very inviting like a friendly community. At the start of lectures and lessons you have to buzz in with your lanyard meaning no strangers can sit in the hall with you.

But it's a long day, 10 until 4, so we don’t really have time to do anything social. The course itself is very social in a way though - we do painting, we play with boxes, stuff like that. But it's not like I can just walk off and play basketball! It’s a long day as we have a lot of content to go through as we are only on campus on weeks 2, 7 and 11 which is equal to once a month.

What projects are you currently working on, both on and off the course?

In my personal life, I'm a youth voice ambassador with Ingeus. A year ago, we were given this opportunity from Ingeus Youth Voice to build a 7-day programme for young people that needed work experience. These people might not have GCSEs, they might not have people skills, they might be on PIP and not able to work. We were able to design a whole programme that started with Lego. Then we added outdoor activities like rock climbing, which is a massive team work activity as you have three people pulling you, one on the wall and one attached to the ground as the anchor using the pulley system to feed the rope. It had to be practical, but it also had to have a lesson base, so we had classes on how to talk to people, how to do interviews and CVs. We named it Rise. This was given to the Re Start people who were on the program looking for a job and needed that extra support.

On the course, I'm doing three essays and I'm also doing an artefact for the Ruskin module about happiness. The final project is to make an artefact and do a reflection on it, so it's a very creative one. I've been working on a flower - four watercolour boards that come together to make a 3D Polyfilla flower. Each board has a different link to happiness - relationships, interests, work, and beauty. It's actually really beautiful - I like it a lot.