Meet the team - Leah Stewart

I'm the training lead so have the pleasure of introducing teachers to Lyfta through our global learning CPD course: Teach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), skills and values with Lyfta.

Anyone who has joined my live training will know that my favourite part of this role is exploring ways of teaching the SDGs. It's wonderful to facilitate the sharing of best practice between teachers from across the country, and increasingly from around the world.

Many teachers still haven't heard of the SDGs or don't know enough about them to begin introducing them to students. One of the main outcomes of our CPD is the confidence to deepen global learning with a powerful platform that makes this easy for remote learning, classroom settings and blended learning too.

I was the kind of teenager who volunteered to set up a school-wide recycling system because we didn't have one. It was a simple, practical way to solve an obvious problem. After school I chose to study geology to learn more about this fascinating planet, and as an undergraduate, I was offered summer internships at oil companies. It was surreal to gain work experience as a petroleum geologist while also researching, for example, mass extinction. Actually, it was more than surreal. It was painful, worrying and complex. I kind of 'fell over' mental health-wise and to be honest, it took me a few years to become positive and proactive again. In the meanwhile, I worked my way up in a recruitment company.

From 2014 onwards I was discovering ideas in education that gave me hope, and offering to support them by doing things like organising and facilitating events, and writing for them. The events I helped create included a national conference on the evolving role of politics in education and an international online summit about the SDGs. These many, varied experiences of facilitation and running online training are what drew me to Lyfta, and are what I'm drawing on today in my role as training lead.

What I love more than any specific storyworld is hearing what teachers and school leaders are actually doing with Lyfta's immersive 360 degree experiences. It's so inspiring to hear the wide range of innovative ways they are using the visuals, soundscapes and clickable items to build students' knowledge of the world and confidence to make a difference. Even when they choose to use the exact lesson plans provided by Lyfta, their role as a teacher for holding the space for learning is so important.

My personal favourite is Michal from the Secrets of the Opera. This video stands out for me because it is the one I prepared with for my Lyfta job interview. For practice, I asked members of my family if I could try to train them on a new platform for global learning. I still remember when the 'Dancing on Ice' video came to an end and my mum just squealed "We love Michal!"

There is a new storyworld coming up in the Amazonian rainforest which is an environment numerous teachers have been asking for Lyfta to include. This is on its way and will be released in 2021!

I'm not a big foodie. I think my sense of taste isn't as strong as most people so I just don't get excited about food generally. I know I'm missing out! But I do enjoy other people sharing food that they love with me.

Hanging out with the people I love, and putting on poetry sharing events. For the last few years I've run a monthly poetry event in my home town which all started in a pub. I simply advertised when I'd be in 'this pub' at 'this table' and that I'd love for anyone to join me and with any poem that means something to them. They didn't have to write the poem and it didn't have to be by anyone famous, it just had to be a poem. I didn't know if anyone would come, let alone be willing to read their poem to me, but they did! After a few months the group grew too large for the pub. The beauty of sharing poems is that they help us to quickly see the heart of a person. We all need to connect with our feelings. I love the way that poems can help us laugh, cry, think and gasp. I find it fun and deeply grounding to simply share poems with others and try to connect with poems that they choose to share.

Thanks to the amazing Erasmus scheme I got the opportunity to study abroad for a year. I went to Lund University in Sweden which has a very international student body. I was very often the only native English speaker in a room. It was very humbling to be in lectures or at parties and realise that every other person is using a second language. As a native English speaker, you quickly realise how much slang you use when they're all happily understanding every word until you open your mouth.

It was also deeply impactful to watch the international news and realise that places that are far away to me are home to another person in the room.

It has to be 'poemo' which is Esperanto for poem. Way before my time in Lyfta, poemo was one of the ideas in the mix for what to call Lyfta. I'm very happy that Serdar and Paulina chose to name their creation 'Lyfta' but loved hearing that they had considered poemo as an idea.