I once watched this awe-inspiring/life-affirming documentary called My Life as a Turkey, so I’m innovating the title for my blog!
Here we have *drum roll please*
My Life as a Teacher
Why did I become a teacher?
I was spurred on to write this blog this evening, when a memory flashed up on my facebook page. The memory was from six years ago; a photo of the last ever newsletter sent out from Blankenhagen School in Germany. It actually made my heart ache when I saw it – it’s hard to put into words what a magical place that school was, and the memories I have from working there. I’ll tell you more about why is was so incredible later on in this post. Not quite sure where I’m going to go with this haha, but sometimes that’s the best way.
Childhood ambitions
As a child, I had several ambitions: an archaeologist, geologist and potholer (is that even a job?!) being the most memorable. However, I clearly remember when I was in Year 5, that I wanted to be a teacher. I think this was because the teacher I had at the time, Mr Cole was his name, was truly inspiring, and I absolutely LOVED his lessons. My sister and I used to play ‘schools’ at every opportunity we had back then, and the neighbours would come round to our garage, a.k.a the classroom, and we would do all sorts of weird and wonderful lessons. The most vivid memories I have of these involve treasure maps and slugs, and hunting for ‘witches’, so not your average school.
Work experience
The dream of becoming a teacher stayed with me all through school, and in Year 10 for work experience, I worked at Dolton (lush little village) school, which was a truly fantastic experience. At college, I opted to do a BTEC National Diploma in Early Years, instead of A levels, so I could get experience working in more nurseries and schools. The course was set out with 6 weeks in college, and 6 weeks on placement. My absolute favourite placement was when I got to work in a Year 1 class in a little village school in Newton Tracey. I had SO MUCH FUN.
My teaching mentor gave me a lot of freedom to teach small groups and come up with my own lesson ideas. Planning an Earth Day celebration where we went around the school field wearing masks and doing earth chants with maracas was one of my highlights! It was pretty wild. I was always motivated by providing children with joy-inducing activities, I think because I want everyone to enjoy life as much as I do 😀
Gap Year
It was a no-brainer when it came to applying for university that I wanted to do a teaching course. I applied to a few, and in the end opted for Marjon, as it ticked all the boxes and also meant that I would get to stay in Devon, woop!
Once I had made that decision, a few weeks later I had a minor freakout, no idea why, but I decided I would defer my place for a year. This actually turned out to be a really good decision (more on that later). So I deferred and decided I’d get a job as a teaching assistant. In September 2008, at the age of 18, I got a job at Okehampton primary school in a Year 1 class, and a Year 5 class in the afternoons. This was a fabulous experience, despite the bus journey taking about 50 minutes there and back.
Sailing Fun Times
Always on the lookout for adventures, something caught my eye around October time. The opportunity to apply for a place on the Transatlantic Tall Ships Race. Prior to this, I had done a fair amount of sailing; the most recent trip being the 2008 Tall Ships Race from Bergen to Den Helder. This was, and still is, one of the best two weeks of my entire life. I’ll have to tell the full story of that in another blog post though! But basically, I could not miss out on sailing the Atlantic.
I signed up and went to the selection weekend in Southampton, which was pretty gruelling. It involved a few fitness tests and interviews, and then we got woken up at about 1 in the morning on Sunday to go for a long run haha. They had to make sure we were able to get out of bed and immediately get to work, as on the boat, you have to go on watch in four hour stints. So you could be up on deck sailing from 12:00-4:00am (we called that the Graveyard shift) and then you’d go to bed for four hours, before going back up on deck from 8:00-12:00pm and so on.
I got on!
We were told on the Sunday whether we had been successful, and luckily for me, I was! The trip was to take place from May-June 2009. On the Monday, I asked my school if I could have a month off, or whether I should hand in my notice, and they were amazingly cool about the whole thing and said I could have the month off, so long as I did an assembly about the adventure on my return.
So that just shows that deferring my place at university was an excellent decision! It really was the adventure of a lifetime – sailing from Tenerife to Bermuda as part of a crew of 23 women aboard Rona II, in 23 days. But like I said, I’ll have to save that for another future blog, as I could go on about it for ever haha.
University
Once I had completed my epic Transatlantic Crossing, I went back to teaching in school until the end of term, then flew to Canada to meet my then-boyfriend for a month of travelling about. A few days after returning from there, I moved to Plymouth and started my first week at Marjon university. It was all very action-packed.
On my first night at university, I had a little party and met one of my bestest ever friends, Ed. Strangely enough, he had also just come back from a trip to Canada! He is an all-round epic human being, and I have so much to thank him for. We worked together as student ambassadors at uni, planned and led a summer school for 15-16 years olds one time and used to get to drive hire cars around the country to go to UCAS fairs. He also played a huge part in me ending up teaching in Germany (and he is still out there!).
Placements
Marjon was great – I loved all the lectures and in particular, my music specialism with Paul Foster. After a few months of lectures, it was time for Teaching Practice Number One. My first teaching placement was a local one in Plymouth. I was paired up with someone called Lauren, who I instantly adored the second I met her. We became incredibly close friends after about a week – probably because we chose to walk to school together each day, and it was 2.5 miles each way! It took us about 45 minutes and we literally didn’t stop talking the whole way there, or the whole way back. That was 13 years ago, and this marvellous human is now teaming up with me to run book clubs during the holidays.
First year of uni seems like a bit of a blur 13 years on. I remember my second year placement pretty vividly though! It was in Manor Park, London. Living in London for six weeks was a very interesting experience, and I really enjoyed working in my Year 1 class. I was given a lot of responsibility and had lots of practice teaching full days in the last couple of weeks.
Then came the time to choose my third placement location. This was one of the fabulous things about Marjon – they had linked with MoD schools (back then it was called SCE schools) and you could apply to do your final placement in either Germany or Cyprus. I was keen to go to Germany, and so was Ed, so we applied, and hey presto, we got on!
Final teaching practice
A few days later, I found out that my teaching practice would be in a place near Gutersloh, in Nord-Rhine Westfalia. I remember flying out there and my headteacher coming to pick me up from the airport. Good service, hey! Then I went to Mansergh Barracks Officers’ Mess, which is where I was to be living for the next three months. Two of my uni friends were also going to be living there, as they had placements in a nearby school. Living in the mess was an unbelievably cool experience. I felt so at home the moment I set foot in it, even though it was almost definitely haunted!
It had such an air of grandeur about it, and was seeped in history. However, it was also quite creepy as there were a lot of Nazi symbols and writing carved around and about, especially down in the cellars.
On the Monday, I started work at my school, and immediately fell in love with the place. It wasn’t on the army base itself, but a little way out in the countryside. That was the first reason that made it magical. There was a wide expanse of land around it too for the children to play on. I was in Year 2 for this work placement, not my first choice of year group, but I’m really glad I did so much experience in KS1 as I think ultimately it made me a better teacher.
Parallel Universe Theory
I settled in to life in Blankenhagen School as if I had worked there for years. It was an incredibly surreal feeling. Does anyone reading this believe in parallel universes?! I have a theory, if I haven’t bored you yet hehe, that a version of us is in infinite (?) parallel universes, and when lots of those universes align, you experience strange feelings, like you feel a place is familiar, even though you’ve never been there before. It’s also my theory for why de-ja-vu occurs – because we might have already lived that moment in a parallel universe. Evidently, many versions of me must have ended up working in Blankenhagen school anyway!
During my placement at Blankenhagen, I became really close friends with one of the teachers there, Emma, and we had such a laugh about how many parallels both our lives had. She was also from Devon, and not only were both our mums called Janet (we did wonder at one hilarious point if we had the same mum – think you had to be there) we also bonded over a shared love of Westward Ho!
Applying for the ‘pool’
When I came home, I longed to be back in Germany, so as soon as the ‘pool’ was advertised, I applied. The pool was like a metaphorical swamp of teachers. Haha. Basically you applied and then got chosen by headteachers in military schools across Cyprus and Germany.
Ed, another friend named Russell and I, wrote our applications together and prayed we would all get to go! A few weeks later, we got the call that we had interviews in London. I went up with Russell as ours were on the same day, and we had a really fun time exploring London for the day. The night before, I was so unbelievably nervous that I couldn’t sleep. Then in the morning, I couldn’t eat breakfast due to the anticipation. Russell had his interview first, and then it was my turn! I don’t really remember much about the interview itself to be honest, just a panel of like four people. The rest is a total blur. Some time after that, the three of us were told that we had been accepted for the metaphorical swamp! Woop!
A Nerve-Wracking wait
It seems like a long time ago now, and I have no idea how much time passed at this point, but all I remember is that both Ed and Russell got phone calls saying they had been chosen for a school, and I think it was like three weeks later and I still hadn’t heard anything. My dreams were shattered and I was about to give up so applied for a teaching job in Totnes instead. Over the next days/weeks, I was having a mini crisis as I was so completely certain I would end up back at Blankenhagen, but it didn’t seem to be happening. Everyone else around me was getting job offers, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I thought my time was up for being chosen.
Then one evening, my friend Emma rang me in such an excited frenzy that I could barely understand a word she said – it was something along the lines of ‘Ben’s going to ring you in a minute! You’re going to be working here!!” But then she had to abruptly hang up so I didn’t end up missing the call with Ben (the Headteacher of Blankenhagen).
The Greatest Phonecall
A few minutes later, Ben rang and offered me a job!! I remember squealing down the phone in excitement – it was the best feeling ever. Probably even better because I thought it wasn’t ever going to happen. Some things are definitely worth waiting for. I had a magnificent celebration that evening, and then Ed, Russell and I could finally all share in the excitement!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my blog, where I will go into lots more detail about why Blankenhagen was the most magical school ever! Apologies that I haven’t got round to that part yet!
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