“My struggle with dyslexia at school shaped my approach to education”
Kate Chisholm is headteacher at Skerne Park Academy in Darlington. At 34, she is among the youngest 10% of heads in the country. Influenced by her own struggle at school with dyslexia, her emphasis has been on bringing back the basics to the teaching environment, with a focus on reading, writing and arithmetic.
My goal was to become the best teacher possible. I never really thought about leadership. I’ve always liked to take the lead and had loads of ideas, so as I was going through my journey in education it just so happened the things I was best at were the leadership roles. When I first became deputy head, I knew for a fact that I wanted my own school. I had a clear vision of how I wanted a school to be and I knew I could never achieve that unless I was a headteacher. So, I just went for it.
My struggle with dyslexia at school shaped my approach to education. When I was at school I wasn’t taught any strategy to cope, so you learnt by rote, read the book and that was it really. I got left way behind because there was no differentiation in teaching. If you were a certain age, you should be able to do a certain thing. I hated it as a result. I was really well behaved but I was just so depressed because I knew I could understand the concept of what they were talking about but they were just going too fast. When I was six or seven years old, I knew if I ever went into teaching how I would do it. I knew I would never make a child feel like I felt.