Welcome to ‘Diary of A Teacher’ - so it begins!

A little bit about 'what' I come from...

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you – Maya Angelou.

Yes, I know, very cliché starting with a quote but this one explains the entire purpose of what you are about to read.

This is my story – Diary of a Teacher.

Like many teachers, I am a storyteller at heart. I know how powerful stories can be too. Often, when teaching, I get sidetracked and divert from the lesson content to a story that sometimes bears almost no relevance to what we are learning. This, I find, is when my children are at their most engaged. I’m now getting the hang of telling stories in lessons that connect to the content and finding it a fruitful teaching technique.

But that’s for another day.

In time, this weekly… thing (I don’t quite know what to call it) will be a warts-and-all chance for me to reflect on my week at school. Ideally, you’ll find something for you in there too - solace, a connection or maybe just a cheap laugh or two.

Disclaimer – I adore teaching, I love the school I work at and the team around me are terrific. That doesn’t mean there aren’t certain frustrations along the way (most of them you will recognise if you, too, are a professional in a school) but nothing I say is an attempt to bring my employers or colleagues into disrepute. I love the place.

It’s currently the summer holidays, though, so there aren’t any school days to update you on.

That makes this an ideal time to tell you my story from the very beginning.

What do I come from?

I couldn’t find the exact quote but I remember reading Billy Connolly say that he asks people what they come from, not where. In his experience, it tells him a lot more about an individual and shocks those who are being asked into divulging far more interesting aspects of themselves. I love this idea, so that’s what I’ll be doing – telling you what I come from.

I’m the oldest of four siblings, two younger sisters, a step-brother through my dad and a devil-baby who I regretfully shared a bedroom with growing up. This wasn’t helped by the 9-year age gap, but I’m not kidding when I say he really was a terror. Just awful.

Then, when he was around 9 or 10, he suddenly switched into this little dream of a boy and we’ve been very close ever since. It was around this time I had my first ‘teachery’ experience.

He was a bright boy but more creative than academic. Still, he was clearly capable and had every chance of passing his 11+ to allow him to attend his first-choice secondary school.

Alone, he couldn’t quite cut the mustard – tests made him nervous and he was ropey on a few of his mathematical skills. Since we’d started to bond after around 9 years of pure contempt, I took it upon myself to tutor him. He passed.

This was the day I realised what I wanted to do with my life. As an older sibling, I’d always had a desire to be helpful and responsible (however crap I was at it at first) and, now, I’d worked out that I could potentially teach. And I enjoyed it. I loved it. This felt like my purpose.

By this time, I had started university. My course featured a ‘sandwich placement’ – a year off from the course between years 2 and 3 to go and work in a industry that interested me. My initial idea was to go into teaching until I received what may be both the most brutal and best advice I’ve ever received.

I had a girlfriend at this point in my studies, someone who I saw as infinitely better than me at meeting the demands of the real world. I, on the other hand, had spent my gap year working on my grandad’s farm 5 miles from home, lived with my parents for my first year at University and studied my degree in my hometown. I hadn’t really seen the world and now I was looking at jumping back into the classroom somewhere nearby. That’s when my then-partner told me:

‘Some people grow up and naturally develop a worldly wisdom and you, Jack, are not one of them. Get out into the world and try something different for a bit first. My favourite teachers all had something else about them and you, frankly, don’t yet.’

It’s not absolutely word-for-word – this was 10 years ago now – but that’s very much the gist. It sounds harsh (and may even leave you wondering what she saw in me) but this was an incredibly important piece of advice for green, naïve little me. Now, hardly a day goes by that I don’t cast my mind back to some past situation, remember what I learned and apply it to the present.

She was at university in Newcastle-upon-Tyne at the time so I thought, why not try and get a job up there instead? I was interested in event management so I contacted some event management companies around the city. Blissfully, one offered me an apprenticeship. I felt particularly proud of this because they weren’t advertising for one at the time and created it just for me. What a fool I was.

Nine months I spent in Newcastle. Just three weeks in, my partner and I broke up, making it a messy start. I had to take a second job because the apprenticeship was low-paid (and got worse), and a couple of weeks after my relationship ended I was fired from there – a week before I had to move out of the house I was in with, as of yet, nowhere to go. On top of this, everyone I knew in the city was a student and they had all returned home for the summer. I was totally alone, crestfallen, underpaid, underfed, depressed and desperate. Then, the worst happened.

My step-brother took his own life.

My mum came to visit me in a moment of pure love and care and insisted that it wasn’t too late to sack off this wild jaunt into the morbid North and come home to finish my third year of university. I should have listened to her but something in me recognised the importance of seeing this through. It was the first time I’d really left home. I didn’t want to run home with my tail between my legs; I felt that, if I did, I’d stay there and that was no longer what I wanted.

So, I carried on. I found another sidejob that welcomed me in with all the warmth the first one didn’t. I’d started to earn some money in my apprenticeship through selling sponsorships and tickets for our events. Somehow, I even found a place to live.

Things still didn’t really work out. The apprenticeship company went bust and failed to pay me thousands of pounds in earned commissions and I can’t really say I came away from my time up there with any lasting friendships. But I did it.

What followed was a few years of exploring, job-hopping a hard knocks. I returned home to work for a local window cleaner during my final year of university, starting my own window cleaning business as well. It didn’t last, but it was worth a try. Eventually, I needed to move on to earn more money so I got a job as a car salesman after finishing my degree. What possessed me to do this, I still don’t know – I don’t like cars and I hate hard-selling. I was rubbish at it and, after a year, jumped ship.

Instead, I felt it was worth another crack at events management, so I found work as an assistant event organiser for the local newspaper. This was even worse than the car sales job. Again, I was rubbish at it and, again, I left with unpaid commissions. All because I had input some information incorrectly (I earned the damn sales). To top it off, my boss was no help.

The adventure really stepped up a notch when my new partner (who am I still with) and I decided to up sticks and try living in New Zealand. We started with an incredibly enjoyable summer picking blueberries, living in a working hostel and making a ton of friends. At the time of writing, I am two weeks away from visiting one of them in Germany, 6 years later. We then moved into the city of Wellington and worked nights in a couple of bars in town, jobs that turned us nocturnal and left us with little love for the place but, at least, the money to do some travelling.

An unforgettable six-week road trip followed, lighting a burning passion for travel and campervan life inside us both, one we are still stoking today. We then moved to Australia and lived with some of our closest friends from back home in the UK – a year of beaches, insane-yet-affordable food and ridiculous wages making this a serious lifetime highlight. Here, I worked once more as a window cleaner (which I was still good at) and worked in telesales for an HR company (another job I was rubbish at). Unfortunately, my partner’s dad became ill and it was time to return home.

I started by finding a gardening job through a friend that carried me through the Christmas holidays before a wonderful opportunity to work for a high street bookshop came up.

This time also presented the perfect opportunity, we thought, to knuckle down and crack on with some career-focussed endeavours. She then started university, studying wildlife conservation, and I embarked on the first steps to becoming a teacher.

…whereupon we end the first installment of my story.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.