From a classroom in Kenya to a STEM learning workshop in Yorkshire

I went back in 2007 and met a head teacher starting a unit for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Its “classroom” was a tin shack with bare iron walls, where children who needed visual teaching sat on second-hand desks. My first cheque was for £50; a university appeal, with a jar of coins and some sponsored chest waxing, eventually raised £1,700 for two brick classrooms and an office.

The 2009 Fellowship

In 2009, a Churchill Fellowship gave me the opportunity to return to Birunda Primary School with eight university student volunteers. We aimed to support the unit, give trainee teachers experience of teaching with limited resources, and explore how we could contribute to the school’s longer-term development.

Working alongside Kenyan teachers gave the volunteers valuable classroom experience and introduced us to different approaches to teaching and learning.

What Kenya taught me

Learning should be visual and hands-on: Children who cannot hear need visual ways to understand ideas, and simple, creative approaches can make learning more accessible. A giant world map painted on a classroom wall, for example, provided a resource that the whole class could use.

Everyone belongs: The children in the unit had not always received the support they needed. When one student’s patient one-to-one tuition helped a boy say his first words, I saw what individual attention and inclusive teaching could achieve.

Leave something that lasts: Our plan to help with the building changed when local builders took on the construction work, and the volunteers did their best work when I stepped back and trusted them. I learned that recognising local expertise and supporting others to lead can create a more lasting impact than doing the work ourselves.

How my thinking has changed

In 2009, I thought mainly about what volunteers could bring: kit, money and enthusiasm. I now believe the best help is the kind that stays after you leave. I kept supporting Birunda, raising over £100,000 as it grew to over 100 pupils.

From 2016, I managed the Mount Elgon Trust on a two-year contract, overseeing schools, a hospital, an orphanage, and building projects for nearly 2,000 students. I also worked to encourage local funding for projects, rather than relying on overseas donations.

My family came too, and our veranda became a home school for about 15 children, including our own two, who learned Swahili there. In 2019, we moved to Malawi, where I taught at an international primary school through the Covid pandemic.

Bringing it home to the Yorkshire coast

Back in the UK, I taught Key Stage 2 in local primary schools as a class teacher with a passion for science, design and technology, and hands-on learning. In August 2026, I left the classroom to build STEM by the Sea in Bempton, near Bridlington. Kenya runs through everything it does, as the lessons I learned through my Fellowship continue to shape how I approach this work.

Visual and hands-on learning: Every workshop gives children a problem to solve. They design, make, test, and improve their own solutions, using what the coast gives us: driftwood, pebbles, sand, and rock pools.

Everyone belongs: STEM by the Sea is open to everyone, including families visiting on holiday, but I focus on children who may not be served well by mainstream education, such as home-educated children and those in Education Otherwise Than At School (learning arranged outside a school setting). Elective home education in the East Riding rose by 29% in a year, and Bridlington South is among the most deprived wards in Britain.

Leave something that lasts: I am working with local primary schools and youth groups, aiming to leave kits and lesson plans so teachers can carry on without me. I have also set up STEM by the Sea C.I.C., a community interest company (a social enterprise run for community benefit), to fund free and subsidised places, because family income should never limit a child’s access to hands-on learning.

Seventeen years ago, a Fellowship sent me to Kenya for a summer. The teachers, children, and communities I met there taught me more than I taught them, and STEM by the Sea is built on that learning.

To find out more, visit stembythesea.co.uk.