Today I turn 40 and I'm not afraid to admit ...
/I was a school teacher for 12 years who hated the last 4 years of teaching full time in schools. If I am completely honest, I would say I enjoyed the middle years (years 4-6). These were the years where I felt confident as a teacher - I knew what I was doing and I could just show up and teach. However, I didn’t enjoy working as a teacher in the school, I enjoyed the social aspect of the school (this is not why I went into teaching!)
The bravest thing I ever did was the day after finding out I was pregnant, walking into the Headteacher’s office and telling him that I would be leaving that December because the health of myself and my baby came first. I walked away from a ‘secure’ maternity pay and went all in on my online businesses. During my maternity leave I only had statutory maternity pay for three months.
Being bullied all the way through school is one of the main reasons that I chose to become a teacher. I didn’t want one other child to go through what I did. All the way through my childhood all I ever wanted was to ‘fit in’, was ‘to be liked’ and not one single teacher told me that this was just nonsense. That’s the type of teacher that I chose to be. I didn’t allow for any nonsense in any of my classrooms and I alway put the health and wellbeing of all of my students first. Being bullied makes you lose trust in people and I am still working on rebuilding this trust every single day. No other child that I work with will ever go through what I did because I will always be there to support and guide them. And I have zero tolerance for bullies.
I was a socially anxious person for 35 years of my life. I had friendships that I thought were real but absolutely were not. It took me 35 years to learn that I was not the one who had to ‘fit in’ and that I was not the one who had to pretend to be someone that I wasn’t in order to be accepted. It took me 35 years to learn which of my friendships were real and which were absolutely not.
The day I finished university, I cried my eyes out because I had no idea what to do next. I had massive student debt and I ended up having to move back home. I went through the education system and I was never asked what I truly wanted to do. I was told of what was expected of me (graduate and get a job). I never want my son to feel this way and I will be his mentor and his guide.
I don’t tolerate rudeness. I am not rude to anyone so anyone who is rude to me, I will simply not accept it. I don’t have time for people to expect me to do things their way. I will do things my way and will do for the rest of my life. And if people don’t like it, they are simply not my people.
The main reason that I left teaching full time in schools is because I felt that it was no longer about the children. It had become all about the paperwork. And all of the paperwork took away from my time with the children. What I loved most in those early years of teaching was that I could just be with my students. I could just teach them and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Towards the end of my teaching career, it was no longer fully about the children. It was about the planning and the marking. It was about performing for Ofsted. It was about grades and marks on tests. Management treated staff poorly and I would no longer stand for it.
So today I turn 40. And I will always speak my truth. Because my hope it that it will help someone else to speak theirs. I hid away from my truth for far too long. I performed for a society who didn’t really care about my performance.
