A dedicated Renfrewshire teacher has won a national award for going the extra mile.
Calum Coutts works at Linwood's Riverbrae School, which educates children with additional support needs.
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He currently works in the senior department at the school and won a silver 2021 Pearson National Teaching Award for digital innovator of the year.
He now has a few months to wait to see if he’ll scoop the gold award title.
Modest Calum says it was an honour to be nominated, never mind to win anything.
He said: “I’m absolutely delighted and humbled and a bit shocked as well.
“I don’t think anyone goes into teaching to get awards, you go into it to help young people.
“Just to get to this stage is a delight and I’ll enjoy going to the next awards ceremony and see how I get on.”
Calum, who lives in Houston, has worked at Riverbrae since it opened in 2017 and was previously a teacher at Kersland for four years.
“Prior to that I worked at Clippens and Kersland through play schemes,” he said. “I’ve always been passionate about supporting people with additional needs.
“I think there’s an assumption about the arts that it’s for people who are good at drawing or painting. But once you start using technology like video editing, photography, animation, for a lot of young people with additional support needs, it really draws them in.”
Calum’s nomination came from staff initially then pupils, parents and fellow staff at the school all supported the nomination.
They were delighted with did putting together a virtual show at Christmas featuring all the pupils and nursery children at Riverbrae.
He visited each class with a green screen and recorded the pupils either making music, with their drawings or acting out a part.
He spend hours editing it all together which resulted in the show, ‘Bah Humbug’ and ‘The Greatest Snowman’.
“A private link was sent to all the parents and the pupils watched the show in class,” he said.
“There were a few extra hours involved in putting it all together. But when I saw the smiles on the young people’s faces, the teaching staff and classroom support assistants, it was all worth it.”
Calum also won the Arts and Culture award at the 2021 Provost’s Community Awards earlier this year.
When schools were closed for lockdown, he posted videos online using his own son and daughter to give parents simple ideas of how to have fun with the arts.
He said: “I did that through my own social media pages and got good feedback. My son was four and daughter was two at the time so it was aimed at pre-school but it got a good response.”
He added: “I’m so passionate about performance and the arts and in a way we need it now more than ever. We need that fun, laughter and excitement of drama, having a sing-song and an opportunity to express ourselves.”
