As many of you will know, I have talked about becoming a teacher for many years now. My first foray into the profession was a student placement at Danes Hill Prep School in leafy Surrey during my first gap year (currently numbering 3) in 1995/6. This experience of working with children aged 7-13, admittedly primarily as a sports coach, inspired me to go away with Camp America at the end of my first year at university and then to work with Camp Beaumont in the UK at the end of my second year. A PGCE and a career in teaching beckoned.
So what happened? Well, firstly I rather accidentally applied for a job at Andersen Consulting (instead of watching Neighbours before hockey training in my second year at uni) and then I got dazzled by the sharp suits and affluent behaviour witnessed on two trips to France as part of their interview process. The subsequent job offer, with my student debts, was too good to turn down and I told myself sternly I would stay for two years to collect the signing on bonus and then I would become a teacher. A familiar pattern emerged as I found reason after reason to delay the ambition to teach in favour of a shorter term opportunity.
But, as any of my teaching friends reading this will know, I was always asking them about their experiences and schools. I even lost at least two bets to become a teacher by a certain stage of my life. Well, having finally been lucky enough (and unlucky enough – for a good perspective on luck, watch this video by Tim Minchin) to be able to take the plunge and fulfill the ambition, how do I feel and, more importantly, what have I learnt in the first month?
Well, most significantly, I still have a passion for working with children. Their eagerness to learn coupled with their innocence, whilst not always apparent, means it can be an extremely rewarding and motivating experience to teach; when you get it right. When you get it wrong, it can be merciless. I wrote in an essay recently that if you fail to prepare, then you should prepare to fail. Not heeding my own advice, whilst meteorically stupid, has taught me, in a way that anyone would be able to grasp (i.e. by making a mistake and living the consequences of that mistake), why that expression applies so much to teaching, perhaps more than it did even with the Olympic and Paralympic preparations.
I formally paid lip service to the notion that I knew I had a lot to learn and that I realised that I had to work hard to become the teacher that I want to be. I now realise how true both of these sentiments are. Fortunately, I find myself at an incredible institution where the history and culture of learning is apparent at every turn. If I couldn’t find this an inspiring, if not a little daunting, place to learn then it’s fairly obvious what the prospects for a career in education would be.
The only negative I have found about Cambridge so far, a familiar complaint from the locals I am told, is the kamikaze cycling. Whether there is a culture of aiming for each other and pedestrians or whether their academic heads are so much in the clouds that their spatial awareness is impaired, I find it safer cycling around the Elephant and Castle roundabout in London or through the streets of Lusaka in Zambia than I do cycling or walking here. For me, culture makes all the difference, hence why I feel in such safe hands with my learning if precisely the opposite is the case with my cycling.
Cambridge, 20th October 2013
Scholey.com 