Tracy Whitehurst, who is dyslexic, understands isolation and set up a specialist school to combat it. Now her staff have won her recognition at the Pearson National Teaching Awards.
Two years ago Kian Gallimore was so anxious about going to school that patches of his hair and his eyelashes turned “pure white” almost overnight.
Bullied at his primary school in Stoke-on-Trent by children who had previously befriended him, he felt further ostracised when he was offered only a backstage role in the school production of Alice in Wonderland. If supply teachers turned up
he developed “bellyache”.
At the age of 11, the council offered Kian a place in a large failing secondary school, but “we knew he would not cope”, says his mother, Amy Gallimore. The GP put the change in his hair colour down to stress and Kian did not go to school for nine months, rarely speaking in public. “It was a horrendous situation,” Gallimore says.
Then the family met Tracy Whitehurst, principal of Aurora Hanley School. She would change Kian’s life.
