My name is Marisa Bruce and I currently live in Greenwich. I was born and bred in Scotland but moved to London in 2009 after graduating from the University of St Andrews where I studied International Relations. I came to London to complete the Teach First leadership development programme and first taught Citizenship and Politics at a school in West London. I chose to do Teach First after spending two summers in San Francisco working with young people from quite vulnerable backgrounds. I really loved getting to know them and helping them with their aspirations and giving them advice. Therefore, when I saw Teach First I was really excited about its mission which is to address educational disadvantage by developing the next generation of teachers and placing them in schools in deprived areas across the UK. 

Since joining Teach First in 2009, I have been absolutely committed to supporting the young people that I work with particularly when it comes to supporting them to find jobs, apprenticeships and to apply to university. I have seen first hand how students from vulnerable backgrounds have so many challenges to overcome to get to their next steps compared to students from more privileged backgrounds. I have been absolutely inspired by the young people in my classrooms who are amongst the most resilient, determined and hardworking people that I have come across. I have also learnt so much from the young people and communities that I have worked in and have had a keen interest in what more can be done to address some of these inequalities. Hence, in 2021 I decided to take some time out of teaching to look at how I could use my experiences to have more impact on some of the systemic issues that I have seen which I believe are having the greatest impact on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

This has led me to join the YearHere programme. YearHere is a platform for those who want to build and test solutions to address inequalities. In the first 5 months of the programme, we are placed in an organisation to learn from the frontline about issues which we care about. I was so lucky to be placed at Care City and have learnt so much about the issues affecting health and social care services. I have also been impressed by the brilliant innovations that Care City are working on to address these such as the Enablement Champion apprenticeship. 

I have loved being part of the careers project as this links to a lot of the work that I was doing in my previous school. During my time here, I have been really keen to try to support and identify pipelines in health and care to get young people into work and apprenticeships. The young people who I have worked with are so passionate about health and care and really do want to make a difference in their communities so sometimes they just need a route in to help them get there. The careers project is a brilliant way to connect young people with ambassadors who can help educate them about jobs, work experience and what they need to do to work in health and care. I have also loved setting up the Young Person’s Panel and getting to know the amazing young people who are helping to co-design some of the work that the careers project is setting up. 

The last 5 months have gone so quickly and I am now moving onto the next stage of the YearHere fellowship which is consulting. However, my placement at Care City has given me so much to reflect on and I leave here inspired by the work that is going on and excited to see how the careers project continues to evolve to help young people in East London. At this stage, I am still unsure what I will be doing after the fellowship ends in July; I do miss working directly with young people in the classroom but I have become really interested in how social entrepreneurship can be used to tackle some of the issues which I really care about. I do  know that I will be continuing to keep in touch with all of the wonderful people at Care City and their partner organisations and am really excited to see how they grow and develop over the next few years.