Welcome to Spectrum Patronum

Hi, I’m Sammie! Welcome to my website – Spectrum Patronum. I am a special needs teacher who works with children and young people in the holidays and at weekends. I love what I do and I have had a focus of advocating and spreading awareness and acceptance for children with special educational needs since I started my Instagram page in April 2017.

I have worked with children and young people with special and complex learning needs since 2010. As the years have progressed, I have wanted to advocate, provide more information, tips and free resources for who ever needs the support. This is why I have started this website. I began my Spectrum Patronum Instagram and Facebook Page in April 2017 (whilst I was procrastinating from a university assignment!). My goal was to share and spread awareness, which I have been doing, but another goal of mine was to share resources. There are a lot of websites such as TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) and TES where you can upload your items on and share with people across the world, But I wanted to do something slight different, which is why I have created this website where all my resources can be found to download for FREE! As I believe in sharing resources with others! Sharing is caring after all!

I would like to take this time to note that I will not be posting all resources I make on this website. (I make a lot!) I will only be posting resources that I make in my own time, with my own resources. I am lucky enough to have access to Widgit Online thanks to Widgit Software. I also make things for some of the children and young people I work with at the weekends and in the holidays, these are the resources that I will be posting on this website.

So, why now? Well, I have been postponing starting this website due to a few varying reasons…

• I have, and will always, put my main teaching job first. Any teacher will know how much time and dedication you put into your job. So I have been creating this website and resources in my free time. It has taken me a while, as even though this website is completely separate from my teaching job, I am trying to ensure that I promote a healthy work / life balance. Even though this website is a good hobby, it can be time consuming – which is why it has taken me so long to finally get it to a point where I am happy to share it.
• I have dyslexia, and this is something that has always discouraged me to read and write. However, as I continue to advocate for children with additional needs, I know that I also need to challenge my own difficulties. This means creating new strategies to deal with my disability, as opposed to shying away from reading and writing.
• Time. Simply time. As you may or may not know, I am a super busy person, and I love to be a busy bee! I have hundreds of hobbies (mainly crafty ones) and as you can imagine, all of these hobbies, plus being a teacher means that I am a very busy bee!

So, I hope this website can provide answers to some questions you may have about specific learning needs. I also hope that it can help support families of children with special needs. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for reading my first introductory blog post!

Sammie

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