Considering this question now, I suppose it was having a mother who was a member of staff at a primary school that first highlighted to me the importance of teachers in a young child’s upbringing and their development during this early stage in their life. It was the idea that they were responsible for creating these young adults and essentially gifting them with knowledge that would be carried with them throughout their entire lives, that was appealing to me. The idea that these men and women were so majorly important to the development of a child and yet they were just ordinary people. Being able to see the difference that my mother and her fellow colleagues were making and the impact they were having on the lives of these children, I suppose, was a major factor in my decision to begin my journey into teaching.

Throughout my own childhood and into my early years of adulthood, I have been heavily involved in teaching younger children the basics in drumming. Being able to pass on skills and teaching children a talent was a hugely appealing to me and also had a massive impact in cementing my decision to follow teaching as a career path.

However, it wasn’t until my third year of secondary school that I decided upon teaching, and even then I was focused on teaching History. Before this I’d considered various weird and wonderful career paths but at the age 14, I knew teaching was the job for me. Then along came fourth year and with it, the opportunity to go out on work placement for a week. For me, this was the perfect chance to try my hand at teaching and get inside a classroom, this time standing at the front of it rather than sitting behind a desk. It was during this week that my attention turned from teaching History to teaching at primary level. I met with many different teachers who all taught different age groups and who all had different outlooks and experiences as a teacher. However, it was a primary 5 teacher’s claim that teaching was the most rewarding job in the world that stuck with me and still does to this day. Eager to test this statement I returned to the primary school the following year, this time for a longer period. Then the next year on a weekly basis, each visit proving this claim to be true. By the first few weeks of this placement I was certain on becoming a teacher and applied here, to the University of Dundee. Here I am now, a student of Education and coming closer and closer to achieving my goal in life; to become a teacher.