So this week was my last week teaching, I will be leaving my post as a University Lecturer. Since the beginning of this year I made the decision to slowly reduce the amount that I teach this has gone from leaving secondary school teaching to reducing my days and responsibility to supply, alongside supply I was also lecturing at a University.
I am really sad to be leaving as I really enjoyed teaching within a HE environment, its very different from having to teach to a strict curriculum such as a secondary school setting, but I enjoyed the freedom to be able to explore and teach topic areas that I love so much.
I have travelled down a long road to become a qualified teacher and I can wholeheartedly say its one of the hardest jobs I have ever done and to all my teaching friends still in the game and to those in the profession you are all amazing.
It was my passion for business and design that made me want to get into teaching, I wanted to spark that enthusiasm in others but the idea that I had in my head around teaching was very far from the reality.
My PGCE is specialised within secondary school training and my subject specialism was within design and technology that was a difficulty in itself as I was the only person on my course to be training in that subject, probably because there was not a bursary available at that time to train within Design and Technology which meant that not only was I broke the whole year I had to maintain a weekend job alongside my teacher training.
Going back to the subject itself it still baffles me how Food, Product Design and Textiles are under the same umbrella as Design and Technology whilst I had the skills in Textiles I had absolutely no idea how to use a drill or cook to the point where I would burn toast. My mum would just laugh every time I told her I had to teach food as well.
During my training every Thursday afternoon I had subject specific training it was hard being the only one on the course studying my subject but the up side to that was that I was given one to one support on all of the subject knowledge I had to enhance on this enabled me to focus on all the areas that I specifically needed.
Fast track a year and I was teaching Food GCSE and whilst having to ensuring I understood the science behind cooking I can say I am a much better cook for it now.
I also taught Textiles and a little bit of resistant materials which linked in very closely to a lot of the things I was doing in my business (As I have always ran this alongside my other jobs). But what I quickly learnt was that so many schools where removing textiles from their curriculum or moving it over to art which in most cases was not fashion based at all, and as much as I enjoyed teaching I wanted to teach textiles/ fashion design in more depth. It was also a struggle that a lot of the students in the school had no interest in the subject so then it would become a lesson on behaviour management rather than focusing on techniques and processes. I wanted to be able to teach to students who were extremely passionate about it as much as I was and I realised that it would need to be in further education or higher.
So how do I get into teaching higher education, I definitely felt like I did not have the skill set to teach to that level, yes I had advanced knowledge of fashion design but in all honesty I kind of feel like I am jack of all trades but master of none. I know the basics of a lot of things but I am aware that there is a lot of learning I can do to reach a higher advanced level. A lot of the skills I have developed now I have taught myself from researching, reading and watching youtube videos.
I am a strong believer in things happening for a reason we build our life based on the decisions we make and when things dont work out I always try to see the meaning behind it and believe its because there is another plan for me. I also believe that the people we meet along our journey can hold huge significance.
When I was on maternity leave this was when I started questioning my future in teaching, I actually applied for a FE role and surprisingly was offered a interview even though I had no teaching experience outside of secondary. I realised this was a massive opportunity and my way into a college setting but my current contract would not have enabled me to leave to begin the role and I felt like I should give secondary teaching some more time.
A couple months later I had a email from my business mentor who I met through the princes trust charity an amazing person who has supported me in different ways both in my business and my career. The email mentioned that their could be some scope to teach at the university that she currently lecturers at. Fast forward a few months and I was standing in front of my first HE class.
I will always be so grateful for being given that opportunity she took a huge gamble on me I loved every minute of it, learnt a lot so thank you so much C x.
As I say life is about 90% hard work 10% luck and luck came into play for me here.
I know that I will miss areas of teaching but my new role allows me to still be within the education sector. To maintain the feeling that I am still passing on knowledge I have decided to add some how to tutorials to my blogs to share the skills I have learnt and developed across the years this has started with me creating some how to guides in pattern cutting which I have listed here on the website. www.sadefarrellclothing.co.uk/collections/digital-guides-pattern-cutting.
Quote of the week -Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.’ Value your teachers