Almost 16 years ago I gave up the teaching game. I walked out on a career that I had wanted to take up for as long as I can remember. Teachers throughout my schooling had inspired and encouraged me and I wanted to be just like them. Mrs Halford with the suede boots and yellow hair, Mrs Sweeney, whose husband looked like Magnum PI and Mrs Lupton, who told me that we cried over boys, not Maths, all had an enormous impact on my life’s trajectory. Mr Mulrooney who was maybe the smartest guy I knew, and Mrs Fellows’, a fine teacher who also happened to be my sister, instilled in me a love of Geography, for which I will be forever grateful. 
All these amazing people had positively influenced me in some way or another so of course I wanted to join their ranks. And yet, just five and a half years into my teaching career, I’d lost that very same passion and drive and I started looking for something else.
When I stop to reflect on exactly WHY I left teaching, I find it difficult to come up with a definitive answer. I was sometimes a little bored with what I was teaching and hell, if I was bored, what were my students thinking? I was uninspired. There were times I had felt enormously let down by leadership and times when I had felt downtrodden by parent matters. But none of these was a single, driving force. It was a culmination, and I realised I wasn’t doing anyone any favours by staying on; not my colleagues, not my students and certainly not myself.
But here’s the thing: while I left TEACHING, I never left EDUCATION. I went on to work in a university, first in a Marketing role and later in Events Management. 
I followed 7 years at the uni with a return to schools, initially in a Administrative Management position and I am currently working in a school in a Comms and Marketing role. Education, actually I should say Catholic Education, is so ingrained in my life; it’s something that I value above most other things.
And now, 16 years after stepping away from the blackboard, I find myself in a position where I am once again able to guide (a very small) group of students on a learning journey. I’m not going to use the word ‘teacher’ but rather ‘co-learner’ because I am absolutely certain I will learn as much from these kids as they will from me. 
I will be leading an interest elective unit aimed at building a ‘content creation team’ at St Luke’s Catholic College in Marsden Park. This course is part of the College’s ‘Adventure Learning’, a program enabled by a clever use of time which allows every student (from Kindergarten to Year 7) CHOICE in a course run for 1.5 hours each Wednesday afternoon. These courses are well outside of the traditional curriculum and include things like ‘Slime Madness’, ‘Design and make a Pokemon’ and ‘The Next Angry Bird’. My course will see students developing quality content, after identifying audience and learning about what types of posts are most engaging, for posting on the College’s social media platforms.
I am approaching this opportunity with an enormous amount of excitement and just a pinch of trepidation. I know that teaching is a whole different ball game now compared to what it was in 2002, but Adventure Learning isn’t your average lesson and St Luke’s isn’t your average school. It’s all different! The kids are super excited about being given the wheel when it comes to their learning and it’s impossible not to tap into that excitement. So here goes nothing.
Adventure Learning, here I come!
Put It In The Soup 
