Richard Anderson JP – Primary Teacher
Richard was born in Bradford in the 1970’s and has lived and worked in the district his whole life. He is proud of his cultural heritage and his upbringing, which mainly took part in the BD5 area. His family moved from Jamaica in the 1960’s and it is fair to say that it was a struggle for them to bring up five children in a tough council estate. This was worsened when his parents divorced and his mother brought the children up as a lone parent. However, the children were taught morals and values, which put Richard in good stead.

At 17, Richard started out as a youth worker within BD5 area and worked for a number of years in this field. In a career spanning 13 years, he has worked with a variety of young people from a wide range of backgrounds. Richard also worked on summer camps and has even run play schemes for disadvantaged families in the school holidays. The youth and community work was a way of ‘giving back’ to the wider community that Richard grew up in.
Richard decided to enter into teaching to hopefully inspire young people, while they were young, to give them the best start in life. After enrolling into university in 1995, Richard passed his degree with honours and has been teaching in the primary sector ever since.
In 2008, Richard was appointed as a magistrate on the Bradford and Keighley bench and is continuing to serve the Bradford community.
Sectors worked in and routes taken: |
|
What I would like to get involved in
Mentoring / Coaching young people
Visits to my place of work
I am willing – with notice – to go on residential activity days / weekends with groups to develop life skill experiences. As a youth worker and summer camp leader, I was able to use team-building activities to help young people develop their self-esteem.
The school I am working at uses I-Challenge, which is a way of using apparatus for children to solve problems, physically and mentally. We would be open for visits from mentors or other groups of children to see how this can be used in other environments.