Meet the Mackem teacher helping students around the world get to grips with chemistry

Teacher James Donkin, aka MaChemGuy, has clocked up over 15 million YouTube minutes with his chemistry videos.

Chemistry teacher James Donkin from Roker, aka MaChemGuy, has helped thousands of students around the world get to grips with Chemistry.

The Hartlepool Sixth Form College teacher started making videos in 2013, to provide extra support outside lessons for his A level students.

He never intended to post them on YouTube but due to limited storage space on the college server, he uploaded his first YouTube video and was amazed to see it being watched, liked and receiving positive comments from around the world.

James now has a total viewing time of over 15 million minutes, including a record 3.3 million in the last academic year. This comes from over 4.3million views, 19,400 subscribers in 129 countries and 616 videos.

And the teacher has had positive feedback on is Mackem accent as much as his scientific knowledge.

James said: “I’ve had amazing feedback from around the UK and beyond. Comments are mainly from students, but I do receive them from other chemistry teachers who use my material to help their own teaching.

“There has also been a lot of traffic on Twitter recently regarding the use of my content by chemistry non-specialists; specialists who are new to teaching A level and specialists who have never taught a particular topic before.

“I’ve also had some lovely comments from parents of students who wanted to thank me for helping their son or daughter though their studies.

“I've even had comments from US students who like the way I pronounce chemical terms in my Mackem accent.”

A friend of James’ daughter Anna recently started Liverpool University where she met another student from Nottingham who told Anna’s friend that MaChemGuy had helped her to get into Liverpool’s vet school.

James who has been a teacher for 26 years and worked at Hartlepool College for 12 years said he plans to keep uploading his lessons and advice online, motivated by the positive feedback he has received.

The videos are on www.youtube.com/user/MaChemGuy