My name is Amy and I’m a Senior Digital Learning Coordinator at Central Saint Martins. I’ve worked at CSM since 2020, starting online in the middle of the pandemic. It was a big culture change for me as I had previously spent 17 years as an English Language Teacher and teacher trainer, most recently, 14 years at a Further Education College in North London. I worked with immigrant communities for a really long time and I am committed to breaking down barriers in education.

I realised during the course of this unit that I have had some barriers of my own, albeit not obvious ones. I always felt on the outside of academia, despite having a degree, good school exam results and family links to higher education. I realised my experience of almost failing my A-levels for want of a bit of study skills instruction, and dropping out of my first university, feeling invisible and unanchored, have perhaps helped shape some of what I want to do now to make students feel more welcome, to remove obstacles and make support more obvious and available.

In addition to this, in my professional life I come from a very student-centred pedagogy, where it’s all about listening to the students, providing guidance and support and trying to give them agency and independence. I think this has also shaped the way I’ve gone about this project (albeit very imperfectly, no doubt).