30/07/2026
I took these photos yesterday as I watched the waves rolling onto the beach. At first, I was really struck by how powerful they were - by the sheer force of all that water as it smashed stone on stone.
But after a while - and I was watching those waves for a LONG time - something else occurred to me.
When the larger waves broke, you could see right through them, as if the foam were floating above a wall of glass.
Every rock and pebble was laid clear in that quick moment, like fish in a tank, before the curl of water broke in front, hiding that clear blue world once again.
How like the pupils I work with this sounds. So often, especially when they were in school, people only really saw the surface and believed that they knew them, just as we look at those waves rippling in the distance and believe we know the sea. Sometimes that surface may seem angry, turbulent, unpredictable.
And I wonder if, the more you are told that this is who and what you are, the more you yourself believe it.
When I’m working with children there is a moment where I finally glimpse the glassy world beneath those waves. It’s one of my favourite parts of what I do. The hidden becomes seen.
Visual Tuition began as a way of visualising concepts with pupils - explaining through visual methods. What I hadn’t expected is that it would take on another meaning - and that meaning is really the heart of what I think the process means to me now.
By finding a way to really see a pupil, I help them see themselves. Often, I help them remove all of those negative ways of seeing themselves that have been layered over the years and rebuild them from the sand upwards.
‘Visual Tuition’ seems to be as much as visualising yourself, visualising who you can be and visualising your future in a way that feels positive, hopeful and honest as it is about concepts.
And I love that.
Mr Smith
Summer 2026
