Coming Home as a Teacher: Returning to My Old Primary School
Stepping back into my old primary school in Felixstowe felt strangely like stepping through time. I walked past classrooms where I once sat as a wide-eyed pupil in 1996, worrying about SATs and puzzling over handwriting joins — only now I entered those same rooms as a fully-fledged teacher. It’s the first time I’ve experienced school life from both sides in the very same building, and it has been far more powerful than I expected.
The school's landscape has changed, of course. The blackboards I learned from have long since gone, replaced by sleek interactive whiteboards glowing with digital ink. Some of the classrooms that once echoed with the noise of our times tables are now nurturing spaces; calm, supportive rooms that reflect the growing awareness of children’s mental health and wellbeing. The trees we used to climb and play around are now off limits, unsurprising with today’s health and safety expectations, though the conkers still fall each autumn as if unchanged by time.
Yet so much is the same. The old climbing frames are still perched along the hall’s sidelines like familiar friends. The rhythm of learning feels unchanged, too; the medium might now be an IWB rather than chalk, but the core of education - children learning, questioning, discovering - remains reassuringly steady.
What surprised me most, though, was how quickly I slipped back into my younger self's perspective. Standing in a Year 6 classroom, I could vividly picture myself at that age, sitting right there, imagining the future, wondering what secondary school would be like. That feeling of dual perspective, teacher and former pupil combined, has sharpened my empathy for the children I now work with. It’s easier to meet them where they are when I can remember exactly what it felt like to be them.
And then there’s something deeply grounding about recognising surnames in the register, seeing people I went to school with now bringing in their own children, and hearing Suffolk accents that feel like home. After years away, I spent a long time searching for belonging without realising I already had somewhere I belonged. Returning here hasn’t just been a geographical homecoming; it’s been a professional and personal one too.
Teaching geography recently, I found myself drawing on my knowledge of Felixstowe's beaches, ports, heathland, and estuaries, not as abstract examples but as part of our shared story. These children aren’t just pupils I teach; they’re the young of my people. Supporting their learning feels like contributing to the future of a community that raised me.
It’s reminded me of something important we often forget in teacher training: schools are more than institutions. At their best, they are community hubs where relationships, identity and belonging are shaped. And while we spend a great deal of time thinking about how to be teachers, we cannot overlook the importance of remembering what it is like to be a pupil. Returning to my old primary school has brought that sharply back into view.
A Lesson Idea Inspired by Returning to School
If you want to bring this theme into the classroom, here is a simple activity that works beautifully with KS2 pupils:
Lesson Idea: “What Will You Remember?”
Learning intention:
To reflect on how school experiences shape us.
Activity:
Ask pupils to imagine themselves returning to this school as adults.
What will they remember about being in Year 5/6?
What skills do they think will carry them into the future?
What difference do they hope to make to their community?
They can write short reflections, create a memory map of the school, or record an audio message to their future selves.
It’s a gentle, meaningful way to develop metacognition, emotional literacy, and a sense of belonging, while reinforcing that the learning they do today continues long after they leave the building.
What I’m Reading Right Now
I’m almost finished Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, and it has left me thinking deeply about the skills today's children will need in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and rapid change. Knowledge still matters, but so do adaptability, critical thinking, creativity and empathy. Returning to my old school while reading this book has made me appreciate even more the quiet power of primary education. These early experiences — the ones I am now helping to shape — are the foundations upon which future lives are built.