Sarah Fletcher | Local Hero

 Sarah Fletcher was nominated for a Depictions of DN back in 2020 and later placed in the Top Ten. Recently, we caught up with Sarah over Zoom and found out more about her role in Town Field Primary and how she felt to be part of the Depictions of DN project.

Sarah covers multiple roles within the school, including Special Needs Coordinator, Early Years Lead, Assistant Head, as well as being a class teacher. Sarah explained how she has been working at the school for 15 years now and actually did her teaching training there! “I’ve been really well supported here in terms of lots of opportunities to progress and develop specialisms.We are so lucky to have such a fantastic team here at Town Field”

“I think special educational needs is always something I've been quite passionate about. Really wanting to support all children and families, especially those with additional needs. Early years is also something I’ve become equally passionate about and has become a specialism. As a result, I've been privileged enough to support other schools across Doncaster as part of that role as well.”

When Sarah spoke of how teaching had to change when it came to the Pandemic and lockdown, she highlighted how important it was to communicate effectively. “We have lots of children from different ethnicities, with 42 languages spoken in school. So, for us, it was really about how we ensure that effective communication with our parents, how do we check in, how do we make sure that they are safe and well? Overcoming those barriers, really engaging different professionals to support us with that was a big challenge, but really important to us that we got all those key messages out to all our community, not just the ones that were able to access that easily.”

Sarah also spoke of why she felt the Early Years role was important to her, she said “it's so important to make sure that those children (in terms of that early years), get the best start to their education. We know that what happens in the early years is so instrumental to children's development later on in school and in life. I think if we get that right and make that environment safe, welcoming and a really happy place for children to be, I think we're setting children up to be successful. I think that's really important.”

Sarah continued to speak on how her role was important as one of the school’s Special Needs Coordinators: “It's really important that all our children get those same opportunities to be successful, and we really champion those children that, may find it trickier to access certain subjects, certain areas of school or different situations and it's about ensuring we all are putting the right strategies and provision in place to give all children the chance to be successful.”

We asked Sarah how it felt to be nominated for a Depictions of DN and later be placed in the Top Ten. She said “(it feels) a little bit fraudulent to be honest, because we are absolutely just doing our jobs. I've done no more than anybody else in school, anybody else across and Doncaster all over the country in terms of that.” Sarah spoke of how It really felt like such a team effort within the school and also praised how well the parents had handled the situation, supporting their children and engaging in their children’s learning throughout lockdown and beyond.

To finish our chat with Sarah, we were keen to know if she could share any moments of joy throughout the last year, she said “There's a couple of things, our teaching staff have really been able to develop stronger relationships with parents that they may normally have done. We've been in their homes remotely, and we've really had that close relationship. It was also fantastic to see the whole staff team pulling together, supporting each other in so many ways during a really difficult time, I think that was really, really positive.”

Thank you so much for chatting with us Sarah. You and the team at Town Field Primary really are fab Local Heroes! Congratulations on placing in the Top Ten Depictions of DN.

Find out more about Town Field Primary here: https://www.townfield.doncaster.sch.uk

Our Top Local Heroes have taken part in a film shoot with artist James Lockey as a way to profile their work and celebrate their achievements. Along with a beautiful film score composed by Hayley Youell, the film was featured in this year’s DN Festival of Light.

Watch the Depictions of DN Film by James Lockey here:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyzO1E-FF6Y