My first book was a GCSE Study Guide for York Notes – Heaney and Clarke and Pre 1914 Poetry. In 2011 I was nominated as Columnist of the Year (Business Media Category) in the PPA Awards for my work with the TES I began to appear regularly in The Times Education Supplement. I was very fortunate that the first piece I had published appeared in The Independent newspaper in 1998 and other work soon followed. Once our children were old enough (Laura, Catherine, Jennie and David) I devoted more time to writing and started to submit short articles. Why should English teachers be different? Uncomplicated words, but they have stayed with me always. As an art teacher once said to me, you wouldn’t appoint an art teacher who couldn’t draw, you wouldn’t employ a music teacher who couldn’t play the piano. I felt that it was time I stopped preaching and did something creative. Only then did I have the right to comment on the processes involved. I have spent my time in the classroom commenting upon the work of others in one way and another as a teacher. Apart from a short period in 2006 when I was Acting Head teacher, that job became my professional life and it is the job from which I retired in the summer of 2011, after 38 years as a teacher. I was initially head of English in Dillwyn Llewelyn Community School and then moved to Cefn Hengoed Community School in 1991 as Deputy Head teacher. I started my career in Gateway Sixth Form College in Leicester and then moved to my wife’s home town of Swansea in 1981. I became a teacher after training for a year in Birmingham.

I spent my childhood in Sheffield and graduated from Leicester University with a degree in English and History. Follow me Where Stories in Welsh Stone began

Swansea by Geoff Brookes