It sometimes comes up in conversation or when commenting on blogs, that in a former life I was a primary school teacher. Pinky Poinker (smart girl) just knew there was a story there and encouraged me to write a post about why I quit teaching … so here it is 🙂 .
As a January baby (yet another reason to hate having a January birthday!), I was younger than all my classmates and graduated from high school when I was 16. Seriously. I mean, who has a clue what they want to do with the rest of their lives when they are only 16?!
I had a lot of pressure from my Mother to go to Teacher’s College – probably because it was something she wished SHE’D done. She often used to tell me how if I was a teacher, once I had children I could work school hours, get school holidays, and not have to worry if my marriage broke up and I found myself a single parent like she did.
Close & Convenient
We lived only a couple of kilometres from what was then the Carseldine campus of Brisbane College of Advanced Education (later it became QUT). And that was the other deciding factor: it was close enough that I could walk. As a single parent, Mum was adamant that we couldn’t afford bus or train fares to any other tertiary institution (I think it was more of a control issue – as in she’d lose control of me if I’d gone further afield – but that’s a story for another time!).
If I nursed dreams of working in an office and secretly applied for a Bachelor in Business Communications at QUT in the City, I kept them to myself … and didn’t end up getting the TE score (OP) to get in, so a secret it remained … yet look where I’ve ended up all these years later. It’s almost like my young self instinctively KNEW what field I would be happiest in!
I was always a good student and mostly enjoyed college right up til the middle of my third (and final in those days) year.
The Prac from Hell
It was the prac from hell – I went from getting 6’s and 7’s in all my previous pracs, to failing. I later found out that the particular supervising teacher, principal and college lecturer involved had a history of ganging up on young innocent student teachers (ie I wasn’t the first one).
My confidence was totally destroyed.
I very nearly quit my course over the Winter break, but my Mum talked me into going back and completing the final semester. At least I would have the piece of paper (a Diploma in Teaching), even if I never used it!
And so I graduated.
Trouble was, so did a heap of others – that year the media was full of stories about the sudden glut of primary school teachers and the lack of positions for them. I was one of the unlucky ones.
As a result, I wasn’t offered a teaching position for eighteen long months. In the meantime, my family had disintegrated and I had nowhere to live and no way to support myself. I ended up moving into a share house with some other young girls from church and got a job in the public service.
To be honest, I was really happy – I enjoyed my job, I loved working in the City, and being a public servant meant great benefits like flex time. There were heaps of other young people working there, and I met the man who became my husband. Good times!
Then the phone rang in May 1988 with the offer of a teaching position at long, long last.
Even though I was happy in the public service, I felt I had to give teaching a try. So I resigned and became “Miss Moore”.
My time as “Miss Moore”
Perhaps you’ve heard what happens to new teachers? They get the worst class in the school, the one that nobody else wants. Yup. That.
By this stage I was living in a flat by myself. My boyfriend lived on the other side of town so we only saw each other on weekends. There was no internet or Skype or email, and phone calls were STD and expensive. Besides, I was a first year teacher – who had time for phone calls or a social life?!
It was one of the loneliest, most miserable times in my whole life. I literally threw up some mornings with the anxiety of it all. My immune system was shot to pieces and I caught every bug going, and used up all my sick leave in just three months.
I struggled with maintaining discipline – after all I was barely older than my students!
The parents gave me a hard time because I was young and blonde and an easy target didn’t set enough homework.
And to top it all off, whenever I was in the staff room, all the other teachers moaned and complained about how much they hated teaching and how they were trapped and couldn’t get out.
I think it took me all of a week to realise that I had to get out of there, and SOON. It took me three months to land another office job – which, would you believe, PAID MORE than I was getting as a teacher!
And that’s why I quit teaching …
I was so confident that I never wanted to return to teaching, I let my registration lapse. Of course nowadays teachers have to be four year trained, and have a degree, so my little diploma isn’t worth much after all.
Bitter? Scarred? Who me?!!!
Although these days if I ever get asked to help in Sunday School at our church, I joke that I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder about working with children, stemming from my teaching days 😉 !
I often wonder if just one of the many factors I’ve listed about had been different, if perhaps I would have stayed with teaching. It’s hard for me to imagine!
I don’t have any regrets though – despite all the twists and turns and uncertainty of my career path in the 1980’s, that’s how I met my darling husband.
And I’m sure my studies helped me land and succeed in other jobs – as well as in the raising of our own children (including a brief spell of home schooling when we were travelling Australia).
When people bag teachers and “all their holidays” I am the first to jump to their defense because I know first hand just what teachers are up against. To all those teachers out there – I take my hat off to you guys – you do an awesome job, and one that I couldn’t do for love or money!
Did you know what you wanted to do at 16? Have you changed career paths at any stage?