Friday 17 April 2020

Opportunity



As somebody who only spoke Cantonese as my home language until I first attended school, the most enduring memory of my earliest experiences of Primary school was being “encouraged” to sit alone in the reading or book corner to help myself as support or provision for families who were learning English as an Additional language was not what it is today (2020).  As my family moved from one part of London to another when they were expecting my younger brother, I had to change schools to one that was much closer to home.  The Convent school I moved to seemed to be kinder to me in terms of ensuring I was always included in all of their teaching.  My teachers realised too that I was a voracious reader, prolific writer and quite skilled at Maths.  Having the encouragement and support of my parents to be studious at home meant that despite the language barrier, I found myself propelled to being part of the cohort which would be described in current terminology as being at “Greater Depth”.  Transition to the local Catholic Secondary school was seamless and I continued to hold on to my position in the “top set”.  My school reports read exactly like Ross Geller’s in series 7 episode 13 of the iconic US sitcom ‘Friends’ “Maths A; Science A; History A; PE… made an effort.”

In the Autumn of 1982, teenage curiosity got the better of me and without permission, or my parents knowledge, was opening the post of lodgers who had been renting rooms from my parents but had moved on.  One item of post was a credit card.  Fascinated by citizen band radio at the time and the early electronic games consoles, I attempted to buy a radio handset and a games console to the total value of over a hundred pounds from a High Street store on the way home from school.  Not being a particularly tall teenager and still dressed in my school uniform, the store staff reported the attempted fraudulent transaction.  That afternoon and evening, I had turned from Grade-A student to juvenile offender.

My school life transformed too at that same moment as most of my teachers made me feel different as did many of my contemporaries.  Those who were scholarly sets no longer wanted to associate with me.  Those who were less so seemed to want to be in my shadow as I had been arrested by the Police and was facing a criminal record.  It was the Head of Year whose pastoral support, care and guidance made sure that after the Police caution I received, I did not let such experiences affect my studies.

But affect them they did so rather than entering my year of 16 plus examinations which at the time were organised by GCE O-Levels and the broader Certificate of Secondary Education standard, I scraped the bare minimum standard to secure a place to re-sit my GCE O-Level examinations.  A combination of pure personal determination with the support and encourage of my teachers meant I made the best of that opportunity to achieve enough passes to be given the opportunity to study for the gold standard of Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A-Level.

Unfortunately, teenage angst kicked in again so that by the end of that first term, first year of A-Levels, the Head of Sixth Form and I agreed that I should leave school at the earliest opportunity.  I left in the Spring of 1986 but still determined that when I was in full time employment, I would save enough money to return to full-time study.  However, the attraction of earning a full time wage and the financial independence that came with that meant I never did pursue my dream of studying full time again.  Instead, I managed to secure a place at Birkbeck College to study for a degree in Economic and Social Policy on a part time evening class basis.

Even though my degree classification was a modest “Desmond”, the year I graduated was the year that Tony Blair became Prime Minister with his New Labour administration.  His policies was a cataclysmic shock to the Government Department I was working for and as a direct result, I secured promotion to a middle management position.  By the time Gordon Brown was at the helm and realised that the money had run out for public services, I was offered the opportunity of voluntary early severance from the Civil Service.  So after almost twenty-four years of being a desk-jockey, I took the offer of severance pay to become a teacher.

That was ten years ago almost to the day of me writing this.  My teaching “career” has not exactly been smooth and I have had to learn to do many things either as new or just simply different.  However with exceptionally supportive senior colleagues at the school I have been working at who I’ve coined as having a “can do and want to” attitude, and providing professional development opportunities I would never have expected, the aspirations I had as a teenager of becoming a teacher has become reality.

Thank you for reading.   

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