I was born in Bursa, Türkiye, quite a while ago. I spent most of my childhood playing hopscotch and skipping in front of our house in my little grey plastic slippers, now they are called sliders. The rest of the time I was busy reading, writing and daydreaming all somehow proved to be very useful activities.

I can’t say that I was academically very bright, I had always the highest marks in literacy, history and philosophy, usually got fairly good marks in mathematics, but physics and chemistry are subjects that I never enjoyed. Maybe that is the reason I just managed to pass them. On top of this, I missed receiving a merit certificate because I failed my PE lesson, as a result of not being able to do a backflip. I wonder how many children would fail their PE because they couldn’t do a backflip!
Fascinated by history I wanted to become an archaeologist. My parents who had never been to school were not so keen on this idea. My mum asked me what they did. I told her that they dig the ground and find old things from the past. She was astonished, ‘ You want to go to university to learn how to dig the ground, I teach you that’ she said. I waved goodbye to my dream to become an archaeologist, at least I was allowed to study history. After studying history for 2 years, I decided to change my direction and studied psychological counselling. Maybe we decide what to do with our future too fast, too young before we are ready!

After I had finished university, I came to England to learn English. During my studies, I met my lovely husband and we have been together ever since then. We have a very handsome son called Simon Peter. Encouraged by my husband and the priest of our local church I completed my PGCE in Early Years and Primary Education in 2004. I then worked in inner-city London schools as a class teacher, music coordinator and computing leader. In 2014, I moved to higher education where I have been training primary school teachers.

My journey from Türkiye to the UK, where I am today has been a difficult but also interesting one. I met with some really joyful people and some very painful, luckily more joyful than painful. I learned something from each person who crossed my path and maybe taught something to those who I met. I look forward to forthcoming events in my life and will continue to learn and share with hopefully many nice people around the world.