Our people

Nigel Ball

Nigel Ball (’06) English Language & Linguistics, York
Taught English Salford City Academy
Now Project Consultant, PEAS Uganda

For me, it was very much about wanting to work in a school where there was a great need for teachers and for good teachers. And it appealed to me because I thought, well, from my own experience at school the teacher is the thing that matters most - it was certainly the thing that mattered most to me - far more than the fancy resources, the classroom, the anything else. It was the teacher; it was the teacher that made the difference.

I went in to school, in to that school as a teacher and my main thing - because I’d not had much training - my main thing that I was going off was my own experience of school, and the further I got in to that first term the more I realised that my own experience of school was completely irrelevant.

I can’t remember the first time I got sworn at, because it happened to me a lot at the beginning of Teach First. But it, you know, it wasn’t on my map, it wasn’t on my radar, and I don’t think I really knew what to make of it, being sworn at in anger, you know, and me thinking what did I do that made this kid so cross?

It was all part of that learning how to do this well. The best moments for me are the breakthrough moments with the most challenging pupils, and there are some pupils who will challenge any adult they come in to contact with, and some adults can manage to win them over quicker, some do it - you know, have more power, so they can influence them in that way. But me as a mere English teacher in that child’s life I have to work really hard with some of those kids to get them, to win them over. But when you do it, when you finally do it, the feeling it’s worth it, it’s worth them having challenged you in the first place just to feel like you’ve managed to gain their trust.

I’m actually going to be going to Uganda with PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools) which is an organisation that’s founded by an ex-Teach First Participant, John Rendel, and I will be working as a project consultant out there, helping with the setting up of new schools in Uganda, so I’m very, very excited about it and it’s going to be another amazing experience for me, and definitely the two years on Teach First has set me up in so many ways to be able to do something that’s actually going to have an awful lot of responsibility with it, so I’m really looking forward to that. And after that, who knows, maybe back into the classroom.