Claire Neeson

About

• Claire started her teaching career in 1989 when she was working as a personal assistant in an FE college: one of the lecturers was off sick and Claire was asked if she could cover 3 hours teaching Communication Skills to a class of trainee hairdressers. Claire’s response? ‘Heck yes!’ And so, a legend was born (Claire has always been modest…) Having caught the teaching bug Claire thought, ‘The world is my lobster (correction: oyster)’ and off she went to teach English in Japan. Fabulous food, great shopping and the teaching was quite fun too. Claire then did the old backpacker thing around South East Asia - fabulous food, great beaches and no creepy-crawlies encountered (apart from the time she was sitting under a tree with a deadly black mambo snake asleep in a branch just above her head - she laughed about it later). Once returned to rainy old England Claire did a PGCE in English & Drama (she’s always been a bit of a show-off) and spent the next 16 years teaching ‘Lord of the Flies’ on repeat (at one point she would happily have been marooned on her own desert island rather than having to even LOOK at that book again!) At some point one of her headteachers was daft enough to let Claire run the Performing Arts department which meant a lot of lessons where students pretended to be trees and a lot of time after school and weekends rehearsing productions (but she’s not bitter about this, oh no, not at all…) One day (possibly a Tuesday and probably just after she’d taught a Year 8 Drama lesson) Claire thought, ‘Gee whizz, I’m kinda bored’ and so she became a student again (but this time she actually attended all her lectures and took the work seriously) and re-qualified in the most fabulous subject in the world: Psychology! Since then she has never looked back (GCSE, A Level and IB Psychology) and the Oscar/Nobel prize/knighthood for services to Psychology teaching is most definitely going to be zooming her way any time soon. Well, she can dream can’t she? In her spare time Claire (who clearly has no regard for her own health and safety) is a skater (no, not one of those baggy-jeaned, long, greasy haired, baseball cap-wearing-type skateboarders - meh!). She is ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with both roller skating and ice skating. And she’s pretty darned good, I kid you not. She can perform jumps, go backwards doing that cool crissy-crossy leg movement thing, she can do stuff on one leg and look, like, totally elegant whilst doing so (modesty again). Claire still has the travelling bug (it never leaves you does it?) and has recently visited Singapore, Dubai, Vietnam and Thailand (though this time the backpack stayed in the loft). Claire’s guilty secret (not actually going to be a secret now is it?) is that she loves watching people decluttering their homes on Youtube.

Published work or mentions

• ‘Psychology Sorted Book 1, Approaches’ by Claire Neeson & Laura Swash; ‘Psychology Sorted Book 2, Options’ by Claire Neeson & Laura Swash; ‘Some Kind of Superstar’ by Claire Neeson (YA comic novel - I think 3 people including the author have read it)

Education

• BA (Hons) in English Language & Literature; PGCE in English & Drama; Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology

Expertise

Apart from roller and ice skating Claire’s expertise is in IB Psychology, having written two full textbooks and many other published resources for IB. Claire ran a teacher’s workshop (more fun than it sounds) in interactive teaching activities in Barcelona and she has also run many in-house teacher training sessions at various UK schools (role-play was involved: be afraid…)

Top revision quote for students

“Revision is like a 1980s aerobic workout: you’ll sweat, you may hate it at times, it may involve lycra and leg-warmers (erm…) but the results will pay off big time!”