Vanessa Weightman

I am excited to now be a part of the Lanesend family in my first year of teaching after completing my PGCE. I have been very fortunate in my life to have travelled and worked across the world following my passion of dance and sharing this with others. I trained on a professional BA dance course at the Institute of the Arts Barcelona before jetting off to work in Greece. Once completing my contract I travelled to Tianjin in China to begin my first steps in education teaching dance. During this time I also worked as an intern within Tianjin University’s foreign affairs department. Through this I attended events including the Beijing Education Expo and the EU China Technology and Business Fair partaking in discussions about worldwide education cooperation to create international opportunities for students studying arts subjects.

Returning to the UK I went on to be an entertainments manager on board the Cap Finestere, sailing to and from the north coast of Spain. I then started teacher training with the University of Brighton working in secondary schools in Horsham and Crawly. Although my course was specialised in dance, I fell in love with the teaching profession and feel there is no better job in the world than getting to share and build passion with young people.

To cherish and promote a love of learning is at the core of my growing teaching ethos. I feel privileged to have the chance to ignite children’s’ minds on their learning pathway. I believe that primary education should incite love in all that teaches and that through this, students can develop key social and cultural skill sets. Opportunities have a great effect on children within their educational provision, the chance to explore, discover and experience new things. I believe this is why primary forges so many fond memories for those who may not have access to such outside of school and why I am so incredibly proud to be a member of Lanesend. A child’s imagination only needs stimulus before a world of possibilities invite them to find out more and it’s this curiosity that I find thrilling to teach.