It’s what I do: teacher assistance

~ Billy Mann

I help pupils write sparkling prose and cracking headlines

From July 2019

It says in my bloggers profile that I’m a teaching assistant. I’m not sure exactly what that title means. I only know what I do.

In the UK, a teacher assistant attends class alongside a qualified teacher and their students. But the teacher assistant (TA) is also a qualified education worker with individual skills.

I have no teaching or TA qualifications. I am a volunteer auxiliary who brings their specialist professional knowledge into the classroom as but one element in a broad educational plan. In my case this is more than 30 years of writing and editing in national newspapers and magazines.

I join workshops at the Guardian’s Education Centre to help school pupils from year five upwards (age 9-10) have a go at journalism. This is what the results look like.

mock-newspaper-fronts
Students create mock front pages, in this case about a musician they interviewed from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

● Here’s what I do at the Guardian.

Published by Billy Mann

I'm originally from Liverpool and worked as a national magazine journalist for more than 30 years before suffering a stroke at age 53. I started blogging as part of a neuro-rehabilitation programme and wrote the very first entries with one finger of my disabled left hand. Later, art became another therapy for me at Headway East London's Submit To Love studios. I blog regularly and volunteer as a teaching assistant, coaching schoolchildren in aspects of journalism.

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