Confessions of a CENTURY Teacher

CENTURY is an online learning platform that uses AI to personalise learning and provide teachers with actionable insights to support their teaching. Taryn Davison has over ten years’ experience as a primary teacher and Maths Lead. Now working in our Customer Success team training our schools and colleges, she wanted to put our CENTURY training to the test as well as use our new benchmarking data reports in a real-life setting. 

It’s been over four years since I last taught a maths lesson in a classroom so I was feeling somewhat apprehensive about meeting this year 4 class for the first time. I left the classroom before Covid-19 hit and although I have

 visited schools and been involved in their online learning since then, I’d never really seen first-hand how this has impacted the classroom. I’d read reports on the impact it had on learning and listened to what teachers have been saying but again, I’d not really seen this in a current classroom setting. 

Ten minutes before my maths lesson, I’d decided that teaching was a very bad idea and was it too late to back out? Ten seconds before the lesson started, I’d forgotten everything I’d ever learnt in my ten years in the classroom. What on earth was I thinking going back into the classroom?

Rewind several weeks and you’ll realise the reason I was standing like a lemon in front of the whiteboard, desperately trying to remember how to teach, was entirely my own fault. At CENTURY, we pride ourselves on the data we generate which can be used to inform teaching and learning. We’re genuinely proud of our product, of the learning material we have produced and we have primary schools across the UK using CENTURY in class and for homework. Some of the most common questions we get from schools are ‘How do we use the data better?’ and ‘How do we use CENTURY in class?’ I decided that I needed to go back into the classroom to get a better understanding of using CENTURY in real life and to test out some of our newer innovations.

Enter St. John’s C of E Primary School, Abram, a 1 ½ form-entry state primary school, part of Quest Academy Trust who have been using CENTURY for six years. The headteacher, Laura, granted me permission to take a maths lesson once a week for a half term, using CENTURY to support my teaching. The year 4 teacher, Alli, allowed me to disrupt her plans and entrusted me with her maths lesson, even after I told her I’d forgotten how to teach moments before taking her class. “It’ll be like riding a bike!” she said. With those comforting words, I started…

Click here to find out how Taryn set up her CENTURY classroom. Click here to book a demo of CENTURY.