I joined BSB Shunyi in August 2015. I come from Leeds in the North of England. I completed a 4-year Bachelor of Education degree at the University of Edinburgh. We had a wonderful college campus on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh just down the old cobbled street from the famous castle.
I qualified as a teacher in 1995 and began teaching in my hometown, Leeds. Strangely enough my first teaching position was as a year 4 teacher at my local primary school. I actually used to play on the same school fields as a ten year old! During that time I qualified as an F.A soccer coach and became involved in coaching at under 11 level. I joined the Leeds Schools FA and began coaching children from all the schools in Leeds and as head Coach travelled over the North of England playing the representative teams of the other city school associations.
I taught in various schools in West Yorkshire for 7 years, gradually building experience across the primary school age range.
In 2000, I taught children from all over the world in Alberta, Canada for the whole summer. I then went on to teach in the same summer camp in the Rocky Mountains for the next 9 summers. It was during one of the trips that I decided to travel and teach. I arrived in Qingdao, China in September 2002 and taught English at the Ocean University. This gave me my love of China and Chinese culture. After returning to the UK I began to miss China. So in 2006 I returned to Beijing and taught Year 6 for the next 6 years. After a brief spell at Dulwich College, Shanghai I returned to Beijing and have since been a Grade 2 teacher.
I have a daughter who was born in Beijing who attends BSB. My wife is Chinese and is a High school teacher. She has a Masters degree in Chinese Literature but still feels I’m her most difficult student to date as she tries to teach me the intricacies of the Chinese language.