Full Circle

As Xmas approaches and I have reached the end of my first term teaching part-time at our local college, I am reflecting on circularity. 

41 years ago, in the summer of 1976, I graduated from Drama School in Edinburgh and immediately started a post-graduate Teacher Training Diploma at Moray House School of Education. I lasted the first term. I dropped out.

Not yet 21, and within the first two weeks of that first term, I had found myself out in a school on teaching practice - a mere three years older than my oldest pupils. I quickly realised that I'd had very little life experience, hadn't travelled, had never performed professionally in theatre or television and now stood at the threshold of the rest of my life as a Drama Teacher - potentially spending from age 5 to age 65 in some kind of educational or school-related activity - and with no sense of myself as a rounded, experienced and credible performer or teacher.

So I stepped away, the first time in my life that I followed my gut (my heart?) and instead, I found a job with a lighting supplier, working in their retail lighting shop, delivering and installing theatrical lighting, and occasionally operating the follow-spots at the Usher Hall or the Lyceum Theatre. Within a year, I and several other ex-drama school colleagues started a touring community theatre company in rural Dumfrieshire, thereby earning my Equity (Actors' Union) Card and so becoming a professional actor for another 12 years.

The story of that 12 years is perhaps for another time, as, unsurprisingly, acting proved to be too precarious and unreliable a profession to guarantee a regular income. A move into IT Training, own business, followed by Training Management, then HR & Learning Technologies management in both public and private sectors, illness and redundancy, brings us up to date and to my current part time role our local college, assessing and tutoring Digital Marketing Apprentices.

And so, I'm teaching again.

Proper teaching, but this time as the rounded, experienced and credible professional that I knew I wasn't back then. It's been - and continues to be - a journey, where every day is, and has been, a school day. As I say in my social media profiles, I know a little about a lot and a lot about very little. What I don't know, I either learn by making my own mistakes, or I rely on others to teach me - from their experience and from the multitude of different sources we all have available to us via digital channels.

The experience of visiting my Apprentices in their different workplaces, assessing their Diploma work in the context of their employer organisations, has been fascinating and enlightening. By getting them to research and share their findings in the classroom and in our Google+ Education Community, we all learn from each other. Just this week, I brought social learning into the mix, when I co-hosted a Twitter tweetchat about social media for business and marketing, with Mike Osborne (@MikeOzzy), others from my online personal learning network and my classroomful of young digital marketing apprentices.  Learning by doing, by participating, by sharing.

 

It's a richer and more rewarding kind of teaching than I ever envisaged when I set out into the world of work 41 years ago. What goes around comes around. Circle closed.

Running Commentary

I've never been 'sporty'. Never played football. Never done athletics or gymnastics. Hated 'gym' at school. Got out of it as soon as it became optional at age 13. Didn't learn to swim until I was 21 See my Blog "Fear of Swimming". Sometimes played squash. Enjoyed badminton. Never really took any of them seriously. Recognised early that I was not competitive. If someone else really wanted to win that badly, let them get on with it. Exercise, as a thing, was never a conscious part of my life.

Fortunately, I have always been healthy and never had any weight issues, else I might have had some problems. Always had a 'fast metabolism', or so I was told/told people myself. Walked a lot. Still do, particularly after my coronary bypass last year, as part of my recovery therapy. That taught me not to be complacent about my health and fitness.

So now I've started running. Decided I needed to do more exercise that played to my personal exercise style, i.e. only competing against myself. I'm following the 0-5k Runner programme, via an app on my phone. I checked with my GP first. He listened to my heart, took my blood pressure etc. Was encouraging. Turns out there's a weekly Worthing 5K parkrun at 9am on Saturday mornings. My GP runs it. He hopes to see me there one day. Seems I've got a target then.

I've never followed any kind of health/fitness plan. Didn't really know what to expect, other than that I might not enjoy it, find it too difficult, drop out.

But I'm still working my through the programme. Just earned the "Half Way to 5K" badge. That's taken me 6 weeks, when the programme suggests 4. But I'm going at my pace. If I haven't been able to run all the timed parts of each section as per the plan, I've done it again the next time, and again, until I've completed it. Week 4 Day 2 was a b*gger. Took 4 attempts (not 6 as I had previously thought) before I could move on to W4D3, which I breezed!

Do I feel better? Fitter? Dunno. But I'm developing calf muscles. My stamina is obviously increasing. I ran a full 16 minutes out of 34 on W4D3.

I'm surprised at how satisfying this feels. And even more surprised at how I'm prepared to do this every two days and how determined I have become to follow through. I expect it to get more challenging. I expect to get disheartened. But I'm finding some inner resilience and determination to achieve this. It's my intent to turn up to, and run, the Worthing 5k parkrun next year. I'll push through the programme, at my pace, until I can do that.

In the meantime, I'm not telling anyone that my goal is to have achieved this by the second anniversary of my first angina symptoms in April and heart bypass surgery in May. My little secret.

Oh, wait...