Blog
Metaphorical forks
Last week, we marked National Careers Week #NCW2022, an event that aims to empower young people through careers education.
We're really grateful to the employers who engaged with us last week, and who continue to do so, and this year it's been brilliant to see more of our very own Valley Park alumni supporting with this, too. Thank you all, and Mrs West - our Careers Adviser - who put everything together to make the week what it was!
All the talk of careers provoked my own self-reflection, as two students asked me last Friday about my own career journey, and wanted to know about my own background - did I always want to be a teacher?
Well, I'm a mathematics teacher by trade, and I completed a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) very shortly after the start of the new millennium at Canterbury Christchurch University. These days, there are several routes into becoming qualified but, back then, a PGCE was the year-long stepping stone into your new vocation.
While I started my teaching career in Sittingbourne as a Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT; now known as ECT, or Early Career Teacher) I completed my masters degree in School Development part-time over about 3 years, and it is a leadership qualification I still use today.
I came to Valley Park in 2008, initially as an Advanced Skills Teacher, a role that no longer exists, but which then involved completing outreach projects with other schools across Kent - indeed, my very first lessons at Valley Park were on this basis.
In 2012-13, I became Head of Mathematics, when the department then inhabited our current Art and Media classrooms. When Taylor Building was completed, the department and I moved over to the ground floor, taking our place below English, and even meeting royalty when the building was officially opened!
I've seen plenty of changes, not least in myself as I moved into roles as Assistant Headteacher, Deputy Headteacher, Head of School and, as I am now, Headteacher, yet these last four roles were never ones I had earmarked for myself. Indeed, had you told the 15 year-old me (or, indeed, the 25 year-old me!) that I would, one Sunday in 2022, be writing a Headteacher's blog, I would have laughed (and the 15 year-old me would have wondered what a blog was!).
I find the way in which careers sometimes develop - and I know not everyone's journey is like mine, there's no right way of doing it - intriguing not least because the 15 year-old me had no thoughts about even becoming a teacher.
Back in my Year 10 days, my contemporaries and I were fascinated by our school's solitary 'Careers Computer,' a yellowing behemoth with its own dot-matrix printer, that (once it deigned to wake up) fired questions at a person for a few minutes, before providing a light grey printout, framed by tear-off holes, upon which one's apparent future was forecast: you should become an actuary or interior designer (which were my usual recommendations).
It wasn't until my final year or so at university that it dawned on me that I was destined to become a teacher. As I was applying for graduate training schemes and listening to employer presentations, it occurred to me that I didn't want to leave the world of education, and so I started to explore the possibility of being able to give back to the sector that had taught me so much... I started by contacting my old school, visiting some lessons by my old teachers, and finding out what it's like on the other side of the teacher's desk.
So, to return to the question posed to me by those two students last week, did I always want to be a teacher? No, I didn't.
How did I get to where I am currently? Firstly, I thought carefully about my own passions, resisting the urge to say "I don't have any!" Then, ever since, l've seldom turned down any opportunity that has presented itself, instead taking every metaphorical fork in the road as an opportunity.
In ten years' time, then, what will your blog be about?
