My Story

I was born in Bursa, Turkey 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 mark 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 back flip. I wonder how many children would fail their PE because they couldn’t do a back flip!

Fascinated by history I wanted to become an archeologist. 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 good bye to my dream to become an archeologist, at least I was allowed to study history. After studying history for 2 years, I decided to change my direction and started to study psychological counselling. Maybe we decide what to do with our future too fast, too young and  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 accepted a job at Manchester Metropolitan University as a senior lecturer in Computing education, sadly my son refused to leave London, therefore I had to return there. I got a job as a senior lecturer in Computing education at Roehampton University where I worked with marvellous Miles Berry. When the opportunity presented itself in the form of  a job at UCL, I did not hesitate to apply. Since January 2017, I have been leading Computing in the Primary PGCE programmes and also this year started to teach the MA level computing specialism module. I also teach two more MA level modules at Primary SCITT programmes. Additionally I teach Computing and History to Primary PGCE trainees. How lucky I am that history has always been part of my life.

My journey from Turkey to the UK, where I am today has been a difficult but also an interesting one. I met with some really joyful people and some very painful, luckily more joyful than painful. I learned something from each person that 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.

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