Lucy Curle-Harrison

Welcome to my website. I'm an online tutor and examiner, currently located in Brighton, who has been teaching English Language and Literature since 2013 and marking exam papers since 2018. I am a fully qualified teacher with a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education.

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Most of the students I work with are currently in British secondary schools or colleges working towards their GCSEs or A levels. This includes my current in-school tutoring with a London academy group and an independent boarding school on the south coast.

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Literacy is rooted in language, but literacy extends far beyond the capacity to read and write. It is the prism through which we engage with the wider world, construct identities and create meaning in all areas of daily life. It is culture, community, critique and creation all at once. This is what makes language and literature so fascinating to teach. It is also what can make it frustrating for those who do not feel they have so far found the keys to the treasure chest or who are finding it hard to achieve their full potential in such a multi-faceted subject.

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​While my overall approach centres around a few key principals, for example, emphasising real exam questions, comprehension of mark schemes and incorporating a wide range of cultural resources to fully develop students' sense of cultural context in relation to the play/poetry/novel which they are studying, curriculums are otherwise completely personalised for each individual student, informed by their own particular strengths and challenges in relation to their course. At the same time I've always found that that learning occurs most easily in a relaxed atmosphere. With that in mind every student can expect to find a calm, stress-free environment: a supportive space where they can feel confident asking questions, identifying weak spots and constructing their own individual path to success, without ceilings imposed.

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More recently, my ongoing post graduate research - which centres on processes of written expression and creativity, and classroom dynamics - has contributed further ideas and innovations in terms of educational resource production and teaching methods, which I find are further helping my students to overcome whatever past learning challenges they might have experienced, and to regain confidence in their own potential. This is especially the case for those students who struggle with anxieties surrounding the open-ended, more subjective nature of essay-writing and creativity, in comparison with more factually-oriented or science-based subjects.

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​My ultimate aim is for all students to reach their own educational aspirations, wherever they start from and wherever they hope to progress to, in an environment of curiosity and enjoyment.