Gender

Female

Location

South Australia

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I am a former teacher who couldn't conform to school as a student and became a teacher to try to make the experience for others better than my own, but due to being a non-conformist I ended up being bullied out by the Principal and I'm now back being a student and studying Software Development. I am a life-long learner and it was through my dad, then a gifted teacher at the small country school i was attending at the time that I came to believe in my ability to learn.

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I live in Australia, and as above, I am a former high school teacher. I am also a parent of a high school student. I used to teach at the school where my son attends and I taught him when he was in Year 8. I am currently a student and I have a love of learning, which, if I could make a living from it, I would remain a student for the rest of my life. I love reading and learning new things. I love reading about philosophy, science, technology, ideas, biographies and fiction books. But, I am also a skeptic, questioning what I read and not blindly believing everything, acknowledging that new knowledge is always being 'discovered/uncovered' and that humans do not know everything. I agreed with what was written in the email that led me to this page and Steve Hargadon articulated what I have believed about school all along. I used to tell my students that to 'succeed' at school they just needed to 'play the game' and that this involved finding out what the teacher required them to do and then just doing that. I was often criticised by my colleagues when I said that what we as teachers were doing was 'educating the students how to be good at school'. I think that many of my colleagues couldn't cope with this idea as the fully believed that they were providing an 'education' and teaching students how to learn. But, my experience of school, as a student and now as a teacher, was exactly the opposite and I only became educated and learnt how to learn when I left school. I didn't finish high school, as I couldn't play the game, and even though I was considered to be 'clever' or 'intelligent' I did not succeed at school and this led me to believe that I was stupid. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s, when a friend who had studied at university, believed that I was intelligent enough to go to university that I then believed that I could learn. I applied as a mature-aged student and began university at 28yo. I was a single mother of 3 children than and working in dead-end jobs to provide support for us. Even though I did well and ended up being accepted into a PhD in International Relations, I still had no clue what kind of employment I wanted to do. So, I ended up not completing my PhD and doing a graduate entry Bachelor of Education to work as a teacher. At first I enjoyed this work, but as politicians have become more involved in dictating the content of what we teach and then demanding data to prove we are 'improving' students literacy and numeracy, and the mountains of useless paperwork and administrivia overtook the core role of teaching I found that I could no longer stomach playing the game and now I have left teaching and I'm studying to find an alternative employment.