So that’s it.  The English GCSE exams are over for this term.  And the students I’ve been working with — some for a few months, some for years — won’t be coming to see me anymore.  I’ve been sitting, drinking coffee and chatting, this morning, but my heart and mind have been there in the exam room with them.

There’s something deeply satisfying about working one-to-one with students, getting to know their strengths, their challenges, their ways of seeing and thinking.  Helping them to understand how much they already know — and identifying how they can build on those foundations.

There’s also something deeply challenging about the whole business.  Struggling to engage students who simply don’t want to be there in the room with me.  Searching for ways to explain ideas and techniques in ways that help them understand.  Finding the right language with which to speak to them.  She’s a scientist in the making?  It’s all about evidence and analysis.  He loves art?  Right, bring on those visual metaphors.  She loves building things?  Let’s focus on how things are constructed.   He lives for rugby?  Ok, let’s think about how can he call the plays on the page as well as the pitch.

I’ve seen students grow and change in the post-mocks flurry of a few short weeks, or slowly and carefully over months and years.  We’ve started from scratch, we’ve focused, we’ve made a few last-minute tweaks.  We’ve read poems and articles and novels and plays.  We’ve sorted out sentences, played with punctuation, tried out new techniques.

And now we’re done.

Next week, I’ll be starting work with a whole new set of students.  Yes, I’ve got a couple that are carrying over — but the majority are coming for the first time.  Some of them are keen, others not so much.   And they’ll all be bringing something to our sessions that I have yet to discover, that they have yet to share.

I’m excited — and a little nervous, if truth be told — although not as excited and nervous as I’ll be on results day in August, mind you.

But mostly, today, I’m proud.  Very proud of them all.

Pippa