With 29 years’ experience at Abbey Grange in a range of roles, Mrs Beetham is well placed to support students at their most critical decision points in their careers.
Mrs Beetham has taught Geography KS3-5, AVCE Travel and Tourism, Key Skills, and EPQ at Advanced Level, taking a lead role for the latter two A Level courses, all at Abbey Grange. This is where she developed her love of skills development work, and she thoroughly enjoyed leading as Head of Sixth Form and Head of House roles for 10 years. Here, she created tutorial programmes to educate and nurture students to become reflective and effective learners as well as developing the Form Tutor role to support tutees in their progression. Following this, she taught part time for 4 years, examined with AQA A level Geography, and made more time for my family, travel and hiking! During this time, she became a specialist Sixth Form mentor and continued supporting scholars and the UCAS process with the Head of Sixth Form, cementing her love of personalised one-to-one mentoring. This continued alongside Mrs Goodier, Assistant Achievement Director of Sixth Form (Progression), upon starting her formalised mentoring role in 2018, where her broad experience of school could be utilised more widely to support a range of students’ needs.
Mrs Beetham continues to coach students, empowering them to become effective independent learners as well as lending her considerable career’s experience to a range of student situations as they arise! With clear understanding about the academic and personal challenges of the Sixth Form journey, Mrs Beetham can help students to overcome whatever hurdles they have, whether in or out of school, and this personalised mentoring is incredibly rewarding. It doesn’t matter whether it's organising study time, books and files, making a career-defining decision, or working with other staff to help the student, she thoroughly enjoys this role. Mrs Beetham can anticipate the demands students face, particularly the challenges of progression choices and the application processes involved. These are all needed alongside studying; it’s an incredibly busy time in Sixth Form!
Mrs Beetham regards it as a great privilege to meet students where they are, to nurture and coach them towards their goals. She co-ordinates the support that students need around them throughout their Sixth Form journey, to become more independent and resilient learners and support their progression in any way she can.
