I’ll admit from the start that teaching was never the definite career path I wanted to follow. When I went back to school after spending a summer volunteering at a Playscheme for ASN children, I toyed around with the thought.  I had loved every minute of that summer, and even though I was only fourteen, I knew I wanted to work with children from then. It was just working exactly how I wanted to work with them. So when I was offered the opportunity to help out in primary school for a couple of hours a week, I jumped at it, thinking that I would love it as much as I had loved playscheme.

This turned out to be a pretty bad experience which ended in me deciding for definite that teaching wasn’t what I wanted to do after all. As an inexperienced and very shy fifteen-year-old, I definitely wasn’t ready to be left alone, in charge of a group of lively and unruly six-year-olds, and be expected to teach them maths- which was exactly what the class teacher had me do on my first day. Rather than do the sensible thing and ask for help, I silently struggled, too scared to ask my class teacher for help in case she thought me incapable. I dreaded going back to the school every week desperately trying to teach them what looked like a fairly simple maths game each time, and decided that I wouldn’t make a very good teacher so had better try something else.

But my love for working with children didn’t go away and I felt frustrated when I heard of the great experiences my friends had had with their teachers and classes. Although it was all I could picture myself doing, perhaps I just didn’t have the knack for working with kids? Thoughts of becoming a social worker or some sort of therapist came and went as I desperately tried to find a career that suited me.  It wasn’t until I had matured a little, and had managed to secure a youth work job in a different playscheme, supporting children with more complex needs and behavioural issues, that my confidence began to develop. For the first time in my life, I had to work somewhat independently to help care for very demanding children, and although this was slightly terrifying, it made me realise I could handle it. I watched the children struggle to communicate, lashing out in frustration when they couldn’t tell anyone what they wanted, and I longed to help them. This was what brought me back to teaching. Maybe with a bit of experience and confidence in myself, working with children would become much easier, and much more enjoyable. So I tried again.

Deciding to revisit the idea of teaching again, and doing work experience in a different primary school, was the best choice I had ever made. My first day in my new class confirmed that teaching was what I definitely wanted to do; the class teacher made sure to include me in the lesson and made it clear that if I ever felt she was asking too much of me, to tell her and she would help. There was a completely different atmosphere in that classroom compared to the one I had been in previous, and it is that atmosphere that I aspire to have in my own classroom one day. Ever since that day, the prospect of becoming a fully qualified teacher with my own class has excited me more and more.

Teaching is a path that I am now certain I want to be on, and although I often wished my first experience in a classroom had gone better, I am glad now that it didn’t. It has taught me that if you’re passionate about something, sometimes you’ve got to go back and try again once you’ve had more practice. And I will always be happy that that is what I did.