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Katie Waldegrave

Katie Waldegrave (’03) Modern History, Oxford
Taught Geography Cranford Community College
Now Chief Executive, First Story

I think Teach First appealed to me because you could get on with doing something right now in September, because of the ideology behind the whole concept - it’s a hackneyed phrase - but giving something back. And because it didn’t seem to be a forever kind of job, and I didn’t have an idea about forever.

When you compare what you’re doing with what your friends are talking about, you feel that what you’re doing matters or will matter and you feel a great sense of responsibility from the start, which is part of what is terrifying, but also rewarding, because even if you only live up to a part of that responsibility you’re doing something that’s, in a tiny way, important - which is nice.

Teach First to begin with was terrifying and an enormous amount of work. The workload far exceeded what I anticipated. It was also from day one rewarding, and that was fantastic.

I think the most rewarding moments come when you win what feels like an on-going battle. There are some great moments, for example, when we got students in to Oxford, and you see their faces and, you know, it’s been the culmination of hard work, and that’s great. But more rewarding really is when I can think of one particular child who was incredibly difficult, every teacher found him difficult, and you would endlessly try strategies and it would work for ten minutes and then he’d be off. And when after one particular lesson he’d not only been working really hard but came up at the end, despite the fact I hadn’t had a chance to particularly talk to him, you know, I’d spoken to him during the course of the lesson, but hadn’t had a proper look at what it was he produced, and stayed behind in break to make sure that I could see how hard he worked and how much time he’d spent.

I’m now running a charity which is about putting writers, authors in to schools for extended periods of time. Teach First has equipped me to be able to do that in a very practical sense, because it links me up to a network of both schools and also fantastic people who can advise and help the other ambassadors. But it’s also equipped me in a more sort of skills-base sense to think about big organisations, to have taken on responsibility. I mean, I was made Head of Department nine months after beginning, and so you take on responsibility and realise you can do it, so it’s a sort of self-confidence that comes with doing something difficult, I suppose.

I’m very, very, very glad I did it. I don’t quite know - I don’t know what I’d be doing now if I hadn’t done it, but I’ve just learnt an enormous amount. I’ve made huge numbers of really good friends and really like-minded people, and I don’t think I’d be able to do what I’m doing now without having done it.