WHY TEACHING ISN'T FOR ME

Now, to everyone who's asked me in the last six months or so what my plan was after this year in Lanzarote, I've said "I'm going to apply to do my PGCE". Everyone who's asked me in the last three months or so has received the answer "I'm going to apply to do my PGCE at Oxford". Oxford obviously entered my headspace because my beau lives in Oxfordshire and studying at Oxford gave me a way to him. How could I not want to be close to this wee hunk?

But I was never really convinced. It was always a very far off point in the future and I did the whole you know, the "languages student doesn't know what to do so might as well take that lovely bursary and train to teach because ee well I enjoyed being a language assistant and I liked school and I could be good at it" schpiel. But I never wanted to be a teacher. I said throughout my undergraduate degree it wasn't what I wanted. I said it throughout the first half of my postgraduate degree.

Then I got scared and started thinking of the impending doom that was my future. I reapplied to the British Council for my Lanzarote job thinking it would give me time to prepare a stellar application and give me extra teaching experience and all this rubbish. But I still knew it wasn't what I wanted. 

I lied to myself throughout this whole process out of fear. I talked to the right people and accepted the offer of a Premier Plus Advisor, something the Get into Teaching programme offers, basically a qualified teacher to help you develop and strengthen your application. She has been an utter dream. She helped me organise a classroom experience/observation day which I completed yesterday at the King Edward VI school in Morpeth, Northumberland. What a bloody school. I've never seen kids like it. So quiet, well behaved, intelligent, engaged.

And I still hated it. I would have hated teaching good kids and teaching bad kids would destroy me. I don't have the creativity to plan lessons. I don't have the guts to pretend to a room of teenagers that I know what I'm doing. I don't think I'm qualified enough to teach a language that I'm not a native speaker of and it's not fair to the kids who want to learn. I'm not passionate about teaching. 

Then there's the information I have about the British education system I have from friends who are teachers, and even things I learned yesterday. I don't want a job that will take over my life. I need boundaries and time limits and something that won't mess with my head. Teaching is a job that requires your time and your heart and all of your effort and it just wouldn't be fair. To the government giving me money to train, to the school that would take me on as a training teacher or an NQT and have to facilitate my training instead of focusing on the actual teaching, to the kids who need competent teachers, to my friends and family who deserve to have me present in their lives. 

There are people who are suited to teaching and those who aren't. I can't commend those who are highly enough. I've had the utter privilege to have been taught by some truly outstanding teachers and it would do them a disservice to join their profession out of fear for the stability of my future and taking the "expected" option. It's certainly not the easy option.

This post was basically because I put a request for career advice on my Instagram story after realising after my observation day that teaching wasn't for me, and my friend Martyn asked what had gone so wrong.

I just want to say, nothing went wrong. The staff and students I met yesterday were so impressive. But I always knew it wasn't what I wanted. I knew when me and my brother were driving to the school yesterday morning but decided to give the day a chance to see if it would change my mind. If going to one of the best schools in the country didn't sway me then nothing would. 

What is annoying about this whole thing is I rang wor lad last night and he was like "lol yeah babe I knew this was wrong I was just waiting for you to figure it out". He knows me better than I do which is really annoying because it's just another thing he's better than me at. Little scoundrel. 

So yeah, any career advice, hit me up. I don't actually need to think about it until like next April/May time but not thinking is scary.    

Hasta la próxima chicos
KB