With the new school year starting up I feel thoroughly refreshed and excited to start a new year again. My online tutoring has just grown and grown and with it so has the demand on my time, particularly now that I am involved in various other tutoring projects like Indie Tutors, BitPaper, various Facebook Tutor groups, EdTech stuff, maths CPD and general networking. In terms of growth, last year was really exciting indeed and I covered that a little in my end of 2017 blog post. However, more so than any year, I felt I overtutored last year. And so this year I have already limited the slots I will tutor.

Hanging out with Aniello at the end of year The Profs party.

Last summer I moved out of my flat in Old Street and have been living with my family for a year now. Since location does not really matter to me in terms of my job this worked out well while I am in an interim stage of my life before getting on to the property ladder.

The summer heatwave in the UK gave me and family a perfect excuse to go out to many day outs in and out of London. Southend on Sea is the nearest coastline to us so we went there and saw the world’s longest pier, Windsor got us some royal history and cream tea, lots of local fairs meant indulging in some great food and I explored the beautiful area around Hackney Wick which shows how much East London has developed.

Southend pier. A good day out on a hot summer day.

The Profs summer party was a real celebration of tutors and I got nominated for best online tutor of the year 2018. Away from London, a weekend outing in the countryside, jamming music in the open air with other musicians was absolutely divine. I played the open air Mint Street Music festival as a musician which was great on a hot day. The Summer is all about big gigs and I got to see my local band Iron Maiden at the O2. East London’s finest.

While the football World Cup was very enjoyable and we were all in awe of Southgate and his new team, the highlight for my family was watching the Ladies Hockey World Cup 2018. This World Cup really did come home, in fact just a couple or so miles from it where the London Olympics hockey games were played in Lee Valley stadium. We got autographs from the entire Indian team and watched the games on a big screen (tickets were sold out by the time we knew). We also went out on a cable car ride and the riverboat and the Farnborough Air Show on a very hot day.

Another escape from London in late August got me to catch up with my ex-bandmate and some other musician friends in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a place that will always be close to my heart because of the time I spent there as a student. And going to Whistle Binkies music venue 20 years later was quite something.

Local fair.

I wasn’t completely away from tutoring and Science though, I had the odd student and true to spirit I organised a tutors meet-up at Hyde Park. I also showed a student and parent around the Science Museum in London and met my client in person after a whole year. To indulge myself in Science even more, I paid a visit to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition which. It is a really inspiring outing with various bits of new and cutting edge research. Very accessible as well.

The summer also gave me some invaluable CPD. I am totally committed to my own CPD and my two most important CPD events were #mathsconf15 which took me to Manchester. A  few days later I went to a maths CPD day on maths and Cognitive Science in London. The perfect compliment to all that CPD has been reading Mr. Barton’s “How I Wish I’d Taught Maths”.

How Wish I’d Taught Maths started off with a pizza meal

It is a phenomenal book, the best one to do with education that I have ever read. I am just over half way over it and I have learnt so many new things. I will be blogging about how this CPD has changed some of my tutoring practice. Already I can tell how it will make me a much better online maths tutor for all levels, primary, GCSE and A Level maths.

I was at university for around 11 years and in my mind the academic year starts when summer ends at the end of September (which is also near my birthday). The way I see it there is a little bit of summer still left and I am going to make the most of it 🙂