This year we welcome Shehlha Zafir to Meridian Trust. Shehlha is our Curriculum Director for English and brings a wealth of experience to the role, so we caught up with her to find out a bit more…
Welcome to Meridian Trust! How long have you been in this role?
I started on the 1st of September (2022), so I’ve been with the trust now for just 28 days.
Can you tell us about your career background, prior to joining Meridian?
My career goes back 27 years. I trained and started my teaching career as an English and drama teacher in Stevenage. I worked my way up to become a Head of drama and English, before becoming an Assistant Head teacher. At that point, I took some time out, due to illness, but I was able to reboot my career when my health improved, starting again as a Head of faculty.
I’ve actually been head of several faculties, including head of drama, head of media studies, head of film studies, head of English, head of communications… I’ve even been head of music. When I look back, I’m not sure how it all happened, but I’m very grateful for the breadth of experience I have! After my illness, I had to pretty much start my career again, but it helped me to realised how much I love working in my subject.
What’s been your biggest career challenge to date?
The role that I’ve just left (prior to starting here at Meridian) was at Northampton School for Girls, I was head of film and head of English. It’s a huge department, spread over three buildings, so it was really challenging, but I’m immensely proud of what we created together and what I left behind. That department is now in really great shape and I was able to encourage lots of progressive, forward-thinking among the teaching cohort there. We weren’t afraid to challenge the exam board or move away from traditional texts. My team became comfortable stepping out of their comfort zone and trying new things and that’s something I’m really proud of as a leader.
What was your path into Curriculum Lead?
As part of working at Northampton School for Girls, I completed my leadership training, becoming a fellow of the Chartered College for Teachers. I also completed my developmental work in curriculum intent and curriculum development, qualifying as a ‘Specialist Leader of Education’.
I’ve done all sorts of lot of leadership roles that have encompassed whole-school initiatives as well as working on department-level initiatives and leading regular teaching and learning groups, but I’m really passionate about educational research and evidence-informed practice. By the time I left Northampton School for Girls, we were using ‘flipped classroom’ as a teaching approach very successfully, so it felt very progressive and forward-thinking.
What are your hopes and ambitions for this role?
I want everyone at Meridian Trust to be able to embrace a progressive approach to teaching. It’s about challenging ‘the ways things have always been done’ and trying something new.
Outside of teaching, what are your passions?
I am BAMEed lead for East Midlands, so I take care of the secondary arm and my partner is responsible for the primary arm. People in the profession get in touch with us and we help them, or find someone who can. It’s something that I’m very passionate about and particularly in terms of recruitment, because they are very few Black and Asian teachers in the teaching profession outside of London and I really want to change that landscape.
I’ve worked closely with Nottingham University, speaking to potential candidates and working with parents to encourage them to consider teaching as a viable career for their children.
What appealed to you about Meridian Trust and what are you enjoying about it so far?
Because I have been in teaching for so long, the next step typically would have been into senior leadership (e.g an Assistant Head role) and although I’d considered some of those types of roles, I knew that I wanted to be involved specifically with curriculum development, rather than getting into pastoral element of education.
I wanted a role that kept me close to my subject, so when this role came up and it was for English, I leapt at the chance to apply for it!
Meridian Trust has a great reputation, and the ethos that I fundamentally align with. There are other trusts that offer this role, but I didn’t like the idea of cloning schools and Meridian Trust genuinely believes in schools maintaining their individuality, whilst working towards a common good. And I really like that ethos.
So the curriculum director role is very much about elevating and optimising your subject (English)?
Yes, and very much through the teaching and learning techniques. I’d like to shake things up in terms of text choices. So many schools have been teaching a particular text for a very long time. I want to develop teachers and their knowledge of texts, encouraging them to try something different, rather than having an entire career knowing only four texts to teach.
I’m passionate about helping students who are not achieving their potential, uncovering what it is that we can do in the classroom to support them. Personally, I’m an advocate of mixed ability classes, but it requires a level of skill and expertise that has taken me 18 years to hone. It’s this experience and knowledge that I want to bring to the table.
What are you most looking forward to this academic year?
I’m looking forward to having an impact on students and bringing my teaching philosophies to the table. I’m going to be encouraging the trying of new approaches to see if we can make a difference to the children. I’m also really excited about building a team, it’s the biggest challenge, but a very rewarding one. It’s about building my immediate team (Katie and Mary, who are already indispensable to me!), but also about turning the curriculum leaders together, to work as a cohesive team.
What is your proudest achievement to date?
That’s such a tricky one to answer, because I every year I reflect on and feel proud of different things that I’ve done, but certainly ‘up there’ would be the work I do in advocating for the education of girls globally and the underprivileged. It’s something that’s dear to my heart and very much connected to my background, in what I had to go through to get an education for myself. For me, education leads to freedom and when we look at outcomes for working class children (compared to more privileged children) you can see how clear the gaps are… and that’s why we teach. We want to close those gaps.
From what you’ve seen so far, what makes Meridian Trust a great place to work?
The level of welcome and support that I’ve had (right from the very beginning) has been incredible. So many people have been checking in with me. I haven’t felt alone. Richard and Leslie have been great at making sure I’m OK. My immediate team, Kate and Mary are simply amazing, guiding me through systems like ‘Teams’ and ‘4Matrix’ (that I’m less familiar with) while I get up to speed. I couldn’t be without them!