TWO born and bred Middlewich siblings are hoping to inspire the next generation of female leaders in the world of teaching.
Tracey Leese and her bother Christopher Barker are set to release their debut book, 'Teach Like a Queen', in May, which is already gaining attention in the pre-sales charts on Amazon.
The former Middlewich High School students have both found success as teachers but feel women are disproportionately represented in leadership roles within the profession.
Tracey, who has been teaching for 15 years, explained how the idea was born out of having more time to think creatively during lockdown.
"We became aware of an organisation called #WomenEd just before the first lockdown," she explained.
"They're a grassroots teacher organisation who spearhead women into leaderships roles.
"Although teaching is fundamentality a female-dominated profession, senior leaders are prodominently male.
"We came up with the idea of using women who aren't teachers, such as Meghan Markle, and dealing with criticism.
"Also someone like Michelle Obama and lessons about how women like her have unapologetically have gone for their goals.
"The book is basically a celebration of diverse women."
Tracey Leese and her brother Christopher Barker
Tracey, who is a deputy head at a school in Crewe and Christopher, who is a head of maths, gained further inspiration on a theatre trip to Liverpool back in March 2020.
"We went to watch Six the Musical, which is about Henry VIII's wives," Tracey added.
"Each Queen tells her story and each one is modelled on a different contempoary woman.
"So one of them is modelled on Beyonce and one of them is modelled on Alicia Keys.
"And we thought that was really interesting as those two things shouldn't really co-exist.
"When we went into lockdown, we became inspired by that and wrote a proposal, never thinking it would get this far.
"It just gave us time to reflect and think of the bigger picture, which is not normally something you get the chance to do."
The book has been published by literary heavyweight Routledge and also has another Middlewich link with the illustrations by Lauren Brown.
Tracey, Christopher and illustrator Lauren Brown
It is already charting at number one in "hot new releases" for education chart on Amazon and is scheduled for released on May 12.
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