On why I am not a teacher

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This is a bit of me.

Image

Sometimes my family and friends get sick of me using them to practice photography skills so I have to use my own head (sad, yes). With this shot I was working on catchlights in eyes. Most of the time I am on the other side of the camera and this brings me to my point.

I really thought I wanted to be a teacher. Right up till I was standing in front of year 10 with a lesson plan in front of me and the gentle encouragement of a supervising teaching up the back of the room.

Oh man. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.

I lasted 2 weeks and got out of the school, out of the prac and out of the course. It was definitely the right thing to do. But how do you know??? What if it was just a rough patch??? Maybe it was going to get better!!! No, it wasn’t. I’ll tell you why.

My supervising teacher was lovely. If she had been a real cow I’d have put it down to that. She wasn’t. She was an acquaintance but is now a friend – we’re planning to catch up for coffee soon. I can’t blame her.

The school was a wonderful environment. Had the school been populated by executive trolls there may have been some grounds for my discomfort but it was not. It was a Christian school which forwarded my own worldview. Yet I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.

The kids were respectful and keen to learn. Yes, even year 9! No, especially year 9! I know! And this one is the real litmus test because if I couldn’t like teaching a beautiful bunch of keen kids, I was never going to love teaching a group of ratbags. And you need to love teaching to do it properly.

I thought this was the maths:

Enjoyment of history/English + knowledge of how to teach = a fabulous career as a teacher.

It turns out you also have to like using imperatives, future tense and active voice 90% of the time (‘you will get out your workbooks’) and being the bossiest person in the room (this is not an insult – a teacher NEEDS to be this). You essentially have to love BEING a teacher. I don’t.

I love making beautiful things by being behind the camera, behind the writing, behind the character acting in a play. Thus, I’m moving back to my cozy hollow in media-land and taking most of my units with me to a Bachelor of Media and Communications. If I can’t be the kind of teacher my own kids deserve, I don’t want to be one at all. And I am very excited being back behind words and pictures where I belong.

so…um…hi!

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This is my first blog post! Yay!!!

So…this is the thing. I’ve really resisted the blog thang because…well, there are just so many and I don’t have heaps of time. HOWEVER…. here are 10 reasons why I have now decided to join the blogging community.

1. I am full of words. My people can only accept so many of them.

2. I have things to say. So many things… rants, praise, whimsy…I think we all agree that the internet needs MORE of this.

3. I am not good at many things but I can write like a BOSS! One must accentuate (exaggerate?) the positives.

4. I have a new camera and I want something to push me to use it more creatively. I’m renting so I can’t stick stuff on my real wall. I figure this can be my hanging space. No bluetac, I promise!

5. Life is poetry; words are power.

6. One day I might have dementia and all my inane thoughts from my youth will suddenly become really valuable! Just 50 or so years to go!!

7. I will never be a teacher (huh? what’s this doing here – see point 8)

8. I have recently changed from a Teaching degree to a Media and Communications degree and feel like I should explore new media more.

9. One day I would like to exchange my writing labours for currency (ie. get a job) and I would like to be able to say ‘blogging? Oh my yes! I love it, I do it religiously!’. Let the reader understand.

10. A little bird told me to.