Mr Z Williams

Favourite Subject at School

My favourite subjects at school were PE and Drama. I loved studying plays, with ‘Equus’ being an early favourite. Drama also helped to unlock Shakespeare for me and I try to replicate this in my teaching of Shakespeare for my students. I have always been into sports, so PE was a natural favourite, especially when we were playing football!

Hobbies

I am an avid reader, especially fantasy novels that mirror the world we live in today and I have recently started getting into detective crime novels with M.W Craven and Michael Connelly early favourites. ‘Lord of the Rings’ is easily my favourite book of all time and despite reading it yearly the magic stays alive every time! The film adaptations felt like the images in my mind had suddenly materialised on the big screen, hence why they are also my favourite films. I have been known to indulge in a marathon viewing of all three films (extended edition only, of course!) and, on one occasion, I even combined this with watching all three ‘Hobbit’ films. Even I had to admit that this was too much viewing in one sitting! Therefore, I’m sure that films/movies being on my list of hobbies is not a surprise.

I love all things sport, particularly football. I am a keen Brentford fan having lived down there in my younger years, so I am now finally reaping the rewards after experiencing a lot of heartbreak in play-off finals! Unfortunately, tickets are now more difficult to come by, but I still manage to make it down a few times a year and catch them when they travel up ‘north’.

About Me

From a young age I have moved around a lot, being a member of four primary schools and three secondary schools, but this has definitely helped my resilience! I was the youngest of 3, with 2 older sisters who were 5 and 10 years older than me respectively. Thankfully, they were always wonderful and we have remained a very tight unit despite now living over 50 miles apart.

I have lived in many places, starting in Redditch and then moving to Leamington Spa, London and Warwick where I settled and completed my GCSEs and A Levels before going on to study Drama at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster.

University was an exceptional experience and the place where I first met the person that would later become my wife. During my time at university I captained one of the three football teams, performed in two plays at the local theatre and played for the local football team.

Following university, I was unsure where I wanted to take my career, so I tried some amateur dramatics whilst working a range of jobs before finally realising the passion that teaching provided. Again, I have my wife to thank for this as she was already a teacher. I was able to gain experience in a few schools and thoroughly enjoyed it. This then led me to train to become an English and Drama teacher at Newman University in Birmingham through a Schools Direct route, based at a school in Small Heath which was then the school I started my career at.

I have now been working at Pingle for 7 years and I absolutely love it! The staff and especially the students are superb. I hope to have a long and successful career here.