Attributes for Successful Academic Study.

Gender Effects in my Childhood

Throughout my childhood my parents did not make any differences between my brother and myself, if I wanted to play with cars I could and if my brother wanted to play with dolls again he could. We would often play together with football being our favourite. Throughout my extended family I was the only girl amongst 5 boys so we would often climb trees and go bug hunting, however we would also dress up and pretend to be our favourite pop stars.

At primary school I don’t ever remember being separated from the boys unless it was time to get changed for gym (in the upper years). At high school again the only time boys and girls were separated was during PE, everyone was made to do the same lessons (rugby, football, gymnastics, swimming) but boys were known as being too rough especially at contact sports. Everyone at our school had to participate in cooking, sewing and woodwork. When choosing subjects boys tended to choose physics and girls tended to choose biology. Looking back I never thought why this could be, however physics is more masculine and biology more feminine in respects to society.

Personally I do not feel I was drastically effected by my gender throughout my childhood. My personal opinion is that parents have a role to play in regards to gender as there is no reason as to why boys cannot play with dolls or toy kitchens and that girls cannot play with army trucks or lego.

Study Skills Book.

Inspiration to Become a Teacher.

2 Replies

Throughout my childhood I always had aspirations to become a teacher, I would sit with my friends playing a game we called ‘schools’ most often than not I would play the role of the teacher. I would give my ‘class’ spelling tests and maths tests to complete and correct them. During my primary education I had various teachers I had strong connections with and remember tasks we completed that inspired me that I would become a teacher like them, they were fun and friendly which appealed to me as a young child. Throughout my years at high school I went from wanting to become a teacher, to wanting to become a child psychologist and then a children’s nurse my decision was always based around children and helping them in some form. When leaving school I applied to study nursing on which I became accepted however, after serious consideration I rejected my offers and decided to take up a full time job. At this time I did not fully understand which career path I wanted to take and felt I needed to have a break from education and let myself mature and explore the world.

In 2012 we made a decision as a family for my parents to become foster carers so we could support and help children to the best of our ability. Throughout the journey of fostering we have had several placements from birth-16 years which helped me to make the decision that teaching was the career path for me. Seeing each of the children grow and learn new things on a daily basis made me so proud and gave me a goal to work towards and that was to follow my childhood dream of becoming a teacher. I enjoy helping the children with their homework or teaching them new tasks such as baking or simple things like brushing their teeth. With my parents being foster carers this is truly inspirational and has given me insight into how children develop and how rewarding it is to see them grow.

When I become a teacher I would like to be a fun and approachable teacher who understands the needs of the children. I would want to make the children feel motivated about learning and show various styles of learning. I would like active learning to be a main part of my teaching as I believe children learn more by doing, rather than sitting with pencil and paper for a full school day.

Jade Lumsden.