Teaching assistant leaves school after 19 happy years

A TEACHING assistant is leaving a school in Henley where she has worked for 19 years.

Bea Church, 55, has been at Badgemore Primary School in Hop Gardens since 2006 and has had five headteachers.

She took the job after a period of illness, turning down an offer to work at St Mary’s Prep School in St Andrew’s Road.

Mrs Church said: “When I recovered I started looking for a job and applied for two, one at Badgemore and one at St Mary’s.

“Both offered me a job but I felt that I wanted to work at Badgemore as it is a state school and is on a council estate. I felt that I could make more of a contribution there.

“When I joined, we only had about 80 children and the building was much smaller.

“Before I joined, the headteacher asked me to sort out the foundation stage. When I came to have a look around I didn’t like what I saw. It was already January and the classroom for the foundation stage children wasn’t prepared at all.”

Since then she has helped children of all ages.

Mrs Church, who grew up in Poland, has lived in Henley for 25 years, previously working at Bishopswood School in Sonning Common and Valley Road Primary in Henley.

She said: “I used to teach English as a foreign language and when Poland joined the EU they were looking for a teaching assistant who could speak Polish.

“I have lived in the UK for 35 years because I am married to an English guy. I used to buy and sell ships for demolition for the Ministry of Defence.”

Mrs Church said the most rewarding part of her school job was working with the children, supporting them and their families.

She said: “Our school has always been very caring and open to various needs the children have and my colleagues have always been amazing.

“I used to be the teaching assistant in years 5 and 6. My main role for many years was teaching English as an additional language but I have also been a class teaching assistant for many years and a teacher as well.

“My colleagues are great fun and we have had some amazing parties outside school.

“We are a family-orientated school, going beyond education and supporting the parents when they have problems.

“We not only teach the children, we also provide them with food and sometimes with clothes if necessary.

“Seeing kids going hungry is hard. We live in a place where there are lots of rich people but at the same time we have poverty. Working here has taught me a lot and has helped me to move on in my life. I have been teaching English as a foreign language for many years but in the last year I have concentrated on that and I now teach Polish professionals English as a foreign language.

“It has given me greater knowledge of the language and more experience when it comes to teaching.

“We have more pupils now and when parents come here, the headteacher Tim Hoskins is quite inspiring and people see that.

“Our motto is a small school in a village and parents can see that we are very caring.”

Mrs Church said that to be a good teaching assistant you had to be prepared to do anything required of you.

She said: “You can't just be a teaching assistant and say ‘I am a class teaching assistant and I am not doing anything else’ because my role has always changed.

“Tim knows that if he needs something done, he can ask me and I will say, ‘Yes’.”

Mrs Church is leaving the school to teach English online to Polish professionals, having learnt the language while living in Poland when it was part of the Communist bloc.

She said: “I am leaving because I have got very busy. I now have lots of students and it was just getting too much.

“I will miss the school. I will miss my colleagues and the children. When I walk in town, students still come up to me and say hello, which is really nice. On one occasion I was on a cruise ship with 4,000 other people in Norway when a former pupil came up to me and said, ‘Hello, Mrs Church’.

“I was shocked but I sat with them in the café for two hours and we had a great time.”

Mrs Church said some of her favourite memories of Badgemore were school trips to Legoland.

“Mr Hoskins was the biggest kid when we went to Legoland,” she said.

“I also remember the time he dressed up as an old lady and nobody recognised him until he started teaching.

“I will miss the Maypole dance in May and the camping night in the grounds at the end of the school year when the children all eat food by the campfire and sing.

“I would just like to thank my colleagues for being amazing teachers and very caring people towards the children. It has been a great privilege to teach so many amazing pupils.”

Mr Hoskins said it had been “fantastic” working with Mrs Church.

He said: “She is a hard-working person and really related well to the children. It was a pleasure to have her and we are going to miss her.

“Nineteen years is a long time and she has seen a lot of change but it’s great that she lives locally and I am sure we still see her.”