Being in care doesn’t define me
Isabella is in Year 11 at school and attended three primary schools – so she certainly has something to share about dealing with exam stress and transitions.
Hi. I’m Isabella and I live pretty much up a mountain in North Wales with my foster carers. I moved here in 2019, away from the beaches where I used to live, so it felt quite weird at first! I’m currently doing my GCSEs. I have chosen food tech, health and social care and business.
When I’ve finished this year, I don’t want to go to college. Instead, I want to do a work-based placement which I hope will give me a NVQ as a teaching assistant. I really want to be a teaching assistant, ideally in one of my old primary schools. I would also love to be a foster carer, and I think that could work well alongside being a teaching assistant.
I am struggling in some subjects at school, especially maths and physics. I do loads of revision, but then when I sit in the exam I can’t remember anything or I find it difficult not to be distracted by the next question.
My school gives us lots of help with exams including revision strategies and study skills lessons. They also encourage us to keep up with activities after school, so I teach gymnastics twice a week to younger children.
Exams stress me out big time. It feels like I’m constantly revising. I find I get grumpy and easily annoyed when I’m stressed, and the littlest noise can irritate me. I’m on the school council and we’ve discussed how to reduce exam stress. One thing we suggested was trying to make revision more fun and involving the whole family as a kind of game.
My message to other students about exams would be “Try not to stress. Don’t put yourself down. Revise hard and put in the work so that you can say that you tried your very best”.
I have had loads of experience moving schools. I went to three primary schools. Once I had to move in the middle of a school year and that was awkward. I left my friends behind – which felt like leaving a piece of me behind – and, in the new school, it feels like everyone obsesses over you. I didn’t like to make friends immediately, but once I realised I was going to stay at a school then I started to make friends.
When I moved to my secondary school, I didn’t know anyone else because it was at the same time as I moved to my current foster home. At my induction days I was in a different school uniform to everyone else and they all wanted to know where I’d come from. It felt like I’d stepped into a new world.
I kept it quiet that I was in care when I started high school because I was bullied about it in primary school. I have only just started telling my closest friends and social group and they weren’t very shocked to hear it. I now know that being in care doesn’t define me, nor do I need to hide my true self.
If I could improve one thing in foster care, it would be that children should be given much more information, and choice, about the people that they are moving to. I was lucky that I got to meet my current carers twice before I moved in, but even that isn’t very much. It’s hard when you move, so knowing more about your carers could really help. Not only are you going to live with these people, you become part of their family.
