Henna
Straight after finishing her undergraduate degree in Religious Education, Henna, now a secondary school teacher, went into a management training programme in a sales environment, but something was missing.
“I felt very unfulfilled there,” she said. “I thought, I’m not making a difference to anyone here at all and so it felt a bit pointless; I wanted a job where I was actually impacting people.”
She added: “I don’t know if you should get all of your self-esteem from your job, but teaching definitely gives you a sense of real purpose.”
Henna started working at a school not far from her Herefordshire home, and found she genuinely enjoyed her work.
“Doing that role was the turning point,” she said. “That’s when I knew teaching was for me. I stepped into the classroom, and it just felt natural and right.”
Within a month, Henna had decided to take the next step and formalise her journey to having a class of her own; she applied to the University of Worcester and joined the PGCE Secondary course.
“When I came to the interview, they made me so excited about the prospect of being a teacher from the very start,” she said. “The interview was a bit scary, you’re asked to deliver a lesson. But they make you feel like you already know what you’re doing, and that gives you so much confidence.”
She continued: “At Worcester, the lecturers are genuinely excited about teaching, and that enthusiasm is infectious, it makes you want to be a part of it all.”
Learning alongside other aspiring RE teachers, Henna found the people on the course formed a close bond.
She said: “It felt really homely and close-knit. I don’t cope well with huge lecturers, I much prefer my learning to be personal and Worcester was exactly that; a place where I felt known, and not like I was just another student.”
“I had a really great time at Worcester,” Henna added. “Worcester made me feel like I could do it, even before I’d properly started the course. From the first time I went there I knew that was where I wanted to train.”
Now, just a few years into her career as a secondary school teacher, Henna is the Head of RE and PSHE in a secondary school in Lincolnshire.
“RE is such an engaging subject; you’re dealing with the big questions about life, belief, and what it means to be a good person,” she said. “You’re not just teaching facts, you’re exploring how people think, what they believe, and why.”
Henna has already begun growing within her career and taking on new responsibilities.
“I took on a leadership role in my first year as a newly qualified teacher,” she said. “I became a Head of Department very early on; I found nobody tells you that you’re ready for a step up, you just have to decide to go for it!”
As well as inspiring children and young people in the classroom, Henna has a following of hundreds of thousands of people online as she shares her journey on social media.
She said: “What started as a hobby quickly turned into something much bigger. My audience is mainly teachers in their 20s and 30s and people thinking about going into teaching. It gives me a platform to talk about the real issues teachers face, and it’s amazing to see how many people resonate with the experiences you share.”