ASCL member, Clare Darley was one of the inaug ural participants in Teach First, the scheme bringing top graduates to work in challenging secondary schools. She is currently assistant pr incipal for teaching and learning at Paddington Academy in west London. Away from school, she recently ran her second marathon and plays club-level hockey. Interview by John Holt.

Mission control

What’s the ethos of your school?

‘The street stops at the gate’; we take a professional approach to ever ything from not allowing caps, hoodies or trainers through to our high aspirations for young people.

What was your childhood ambition?

I probably shouldn’t be revealing this but I attended a summer space school when I was 16. There were lots of experiments and talks from NASA people. I was interested in astrophysics and had always wanted to be an astronaut but I suppose that ’s gone out the window now.

I also had an ambition to go to Cambridge from a very young age; when I arrived, I originally started a maths with physics course but, after a year, I found the maths side a bit too abstract. I remember one lec ture about basic number theory where it took four sides of A4 to prove that one plus one equalled t wo. I just thought ‘What is going on?’ If I can visualise a problem, I find it more appealing but that bordered on the philosophical, so I switched to natural sciences.

As a Teach First Ambassador, you visited New York charter schools for a research project. So what did you learn?

We saw two schools in which behaviour was very tight and which operated in an almost military-style with absolute routines and regulations, silent corridors and so on. Some of the ideas were transferable here but a lot of it would be more difficult in a non-US context. The way a ver y controlling environment sometimes spilled into the classroom was a challenge for me.

A lot of it looked teacher-led, whereas at Paddington we tr y to encourage a student- centred environment where they learn with and from each other and the teacher is a guide rather than the fount of all knowledge.

You had a spell working in the Middle East. What was that like?

I was in an international school in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, serving a middle class, well- educated community. I was struck by the in-built, high aspirations of the young p eople and their families. There was no doubt in any of their minds that they would go on to a great universit y and get a good job. The challenge in the schools I have worked at in London is often to instil that cer taint y and self-belief in the young people that they can and will have happy and successful lives.

Are you ruthless on the hockey field? What’s the worst injury you’ve meted out?

I play in defence and have broken people’s fingers. I take my role very seriously and put in the tackles. Sport gives you focal points… there always has to be something to build up to, just like in teaching.

www.teachfirst.org.uk

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