Our Head of Science Perspective

The reason that I chose a career in Science was because of my school experiences. I can still vividly remember a lot of my science lessons from school, even down to experiments I completed and diagrams that I drew in my exercise book.

I went to a school very similar to Queen Mary’s – Bilston Girls’ High School – which was sadly neglected for many years and is now a trendy apartment block. Since we were all girls and the majority of teachers were female, I never got the idea that Science was not for girls, I just took it for granted that it was normal for girls to love Science. Interestingly, of the girls that I went to school with, a very large proportion went into the sciences and several of them are also now Heads of Science. I think that shows just how good the Science teaching was at my school.

One of the most influential teachers was my Chemistry teacher - Miss Dickson – who was inspirational. I remember lining up outside the Chemistry lab with my petrol blue wrap around lab coat on, waiting to find out what exciting things we would be learning about.

Our lessons were always really well structured; we would enter the room, greet the teacher and sit down. We were always told what we would be doing in the lesson and then Miss Dickson would roll the blackboard around to reveal an amazing diagram for us to draw – I guess that would be classed as our starter activity now. After drawing the diagram with a really sharp pencil and a ruler, remembering that glass doesn’t have corners, we would do the experiment. Then we would record our results, talk about them and work out what they meant.

Miss Winwood was our Physics teacher and she taught us a lot about scientific method, controlling variables and making sure that the results we got in our experiments were meaningful. I owe her a lot since she was also my form teacher and always showed that she believed in me. I think that element is also what makes Queen Mary’s special; we believe in our students and their ability to make the right choices for themselves, their peer groups and their future.