about

I used to be a teacher of French and latterly Welsh and ESOL, and head of French & Community Languages at a comprehensive school in inner-city Cardiff. This site was my attempt to make my teaching resources available to my students.

When I joined the teaching profession, it was because I wanted to make a difference: I joined a legion of creative, dedicated, slightly eccentric individuals who loved their subjects and wanted to share their knowledge with young people and to help them to reach for the stars (cue Steps song!). I was appointed as head of department because of my status as a leading professional.

Over the years, I’ve seen creativity and innovation stamped on and driven out. Everybody has to use the same faddish strategies of the day: the fact that your own techniques and ideas work isn’t good enough – eventually it’s got to the point where I refuse to try to fit into the corporate mould that I’m expected to. For years, I was a really good teacher, and my results were superb. It sucks that so-called improvement strategies for teachers have made me so uncomfortable that my students aren’t getting the best.

So I’ve left teaching. Hopefully not forever: I love working with young people; I still love my subject and I’m a pretty good teacher.

I’m leaving these resources here in the hope that somebody will be able to make use of them. Not all of my resources ever made it onto here – bizarrely, now that I have left the teaching profession, I’ll finally have more time to add others.

Please feel free to download any of the resources and use them as you see fit! If you want to post them somewhere else, though, acknowledgement of their source would be appreciated – and would be only polite.