Mr Fordham
I’m Will Fordham and I have taught English Literature and Language in a variety of secondary schools since 2014, creating schemes of work for AQA, OCR, IGCSE and International Baccalaureate curricula. Previously, before training to be a teacher, I worked as a civil servant and communications consultant.
At my previous school in Cambridge, I was a Key Stage Four coordinator and gained valuable experience writing, moderating and assessing GCSE Literature and Language papers for mock exams. I also coached sixth-form students with practice Oxbridge ELAT interviews and mentored several pupils through the National Theatre’s ‘New Views’ play-writing competition. One former student is now due to have his submitted piece performed in a theatre here in Cambridge!
I have just finished a master’s degree in early modern literature at King’s College in London, which involved exploring the manuscript and printing cultures that developed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. I enjoy Shakespeare’s work immensely but also that of other writers of the time, including Mary Wroth, Ben Jonson and Aemilia Lanyer. The focus of my dissertation was the theory that a ‘memory theatre’ engraving in a 17th century text by Robert Fludd was actually an image of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre itself!
My approach to teaching is one that aims to demonstrate that English literature and language are inspirational subjects for young people to excel within: by engaging our imagination with the power of the printed and performed word, we can best explore the world within and around us. In my spare time, I enjoy oil painting, origami, films and theatre, writing poetry and fiction and cycling.