Unsung Educators – from school rogue to Educational Psychologist

From being on the edge of expulsion to helping those with troubles he has experienced himself, a UON graduate shares his journey to being an Unsung Educator.

In the latest in the series of Unsung Educator podcasts, Adam Chapman, UON’s Senior Lecturer in Education spoke to Ryan Moore, currently Assistant Educational Psychologist at North Northamptonshire Council having obtained a Master’s Degree in Psychology at UON in 2022.

After leaving school Ryan started as a Sports Coach then did a foundation degree in Learning and Teaching. But then while working as a Learning Support Assistant he became frustrated at not being able to cater for the most challenging children he came across.

Ryan had his own troubles at school as a child and Adam delves deeper into what moved him off a destructive path and the motivations and choices he has made since then to add something back to a system which helped him.

Ryan said: “I never saw myself going into education, school for me was quite difficult. I was an angry child, physically aggressive, shoving chairs around, a bin was set on fire unfortunately at one point. People were scared of me.”

He added school friends almost wouldn’t recognise him now as an educational psychologist and that his life was turned around by the transformative impact of a passionate and capable teacher.

He said: “I wasn’t really in education, and it got worse in secondary school, I was about to be expelled, on my last chance. My mum fought for me, ‘he’s a nice guy underneath all this,’ and one teacher really invested in me, I’m still in contact with them now because he really got my head together and turned my life around massively.”

Ryan said teachers who gave him a chance to live up to their trust were the ones he responded to most positively.

At the meeting to discuss his expulsion, he was given an ultimatum, he recalls: “There was this art teacher, and I despised him, I hated his lessons. I’d always felt like he found any opportunity to tell me off. And then I had the meeting, this was my final chance, and they were going to put me in with him.

“He said ‘I know we’ve had our times, but let’s have a fresh start.’ And then he just spoke to me nicely. If I was having a hard time or was particularly angry about something, he’d say ‘let’s have a chat,’ or sent me outside to kick a ball around, just to give me some space to get my head straight.

“He gave that nurturing you’d expect to get in a primary school, while still towing the line, still making sure I was doing what I needed to do, but he was giving me that chance to explain myself and took the time to listen.”

Unsung Educators began to amplify the hard work and impact of Teaching Assistants but encompasses all those roles inside education aside teaching itself.

Listen to the podcast with Ryan, or to browse past episodes visit UON Podcasts.