Lockdown teacher reflects on unexpected success

An English teacher who amassed thousands of followers by offering online lessons during the Covid-19 pandemic said she was still "amazed" by how quickly the service took off.

On 23 March 2020, the day the first lockdown started, Holly King-Mand began hosting free 30-minute lessons on Facebook from her home to support parents all over the world.

Her 74 Facebook followers quickly rose to about 60,000 across three social media platforms.

"I still can't believe it," said the 41-year-old from Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire.

"Even five years on it doesn't quite seem real that you could put a little advert out on social media and a few days later thousands of people are watching you live."

Ms King-Mand was on maternity leave after having her second child and was yet to return to the classroom when the first lockdown started, so decided to put her skills to use.

Since then, she has not returned to the conventional classroom but turned her teaching into a business, continuing to offer one-to-one tutoring and online workshops for GCSE and Key Stage 3 and 4.

She also works with the National Literary Trust, talks about her lockdown experiences and her love of books in schools, and writes a regular column in The Week Junior.

Three years ago she ran free English classes for Ukrainian youngsters who had come to the UK.

Ms King-Mand, who has had two more children since 2020, said she always reflected on her "unexpected success" at this time of year.

"It's just wild that it even happened in the first place," she said.

"That first live lesson, I started going live and my mum messaged me and said you're back to front, so I had to quickly cancel the live and adjust the iPad - I had no idea what I was doing at all and no expectation that there would be thousands of people watching."

Her work saw her recognised by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who invited her and 19 other educators to a reception at No 10 to celebrate their innovative work during the pandemic.

She previously said that we need to "focus on the good to help us recover from the pandemic" and her view has not changed.

"There is so much coverage of the difficulties a generation face as a result of lockdown," she said.

"But I think we are yet to acknowledge the positive impact it also had on many of them."

She continued: "The biggest change I have seen is the quality of online learning and how tutors have adapted so quickly to using technology... and technology improving to support that. It's phenomenal.

"Online teachers have mastered their craft and found ways to do this without being in the same room as their students.

While Ms King-Mand does not work in a school, her husband is a teacher, and she said many children still had "difficulty in their oral communication and expression which we can only assume is a direct result of lockdown".

"But I also see a lot of resilience and determination in teenagers and parents; they refuse to be defined by the difficulties they faced during that period.

"It's not just about getting top grades, it's about wanting children to really enjoy learning and I wonder if this is off the back of a period where to start with, the sort of learning children were doing at home, such as worksheets at the kitchen table, was not enjoyable.

"I still have children who come to me five years on just for the love of it."

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