Leaving teaching

The start of the new school year has finally reared its ugly head. The summer has come to an end and teachers around the UK have been setting their alarms and preparing to go back to school. I, however, have not.

Why leave a stable career?

Many months ago I decided to leave teaching. Although teaching is considered as a stable career, it is not an easy one. Not everyone can be a teacher. There is much more to it than simply knowing the content that you are meant to teach. I found that one of the more difficult aspects of teaching was the workload. Countless evenings and weekends throughout the year were taken up by planning and marking, marking, marking.

I found myself getting increasingly frustrated by the amount of time that was taken up by this constant marking. I understood why it was important and how it helped enhancing the learning for the students, but I was sure that there had to be a more efficient way to provide feedback to students. There are numerous different places for teachers to go to get help with their planning, but nothing is currently available to help them with their marking.

What next?

My frustrations eventually led me to think that if there wasn’t anything available to help teachers with their marking, maybe it was because no body had thought it was needed, not because it couldn’t be done. During the past year, I had started doing some free online beginnings coding courses (http://www.codecademy.com, http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/book/ etc), as a bit of a hobby. I had really enjoyed these courses and so I decided to bring the two together. I applied to several Computer Science masters and handed in my resignation. While I was waiting for a response I did some research about the different options available. Through this research I stumbled upon Makers Academy.

Makers vs Masters

Makers Academy is an intensive 12 week coding course that focuses on learning by doing. After doing some extensive research, and talking to some former Makers Academy students, I decided to apply to Makers and eventually turned down the Computer Science Masters because;

  • Makers is a much more practical and hands-on approach to coding
  • It is much shorter than doing a full masters programme
  • The classes are small, resulting in a high teacher to students ratio

So now what?

In two weeks I’m going to be moving back to London to start Makers Academy. But at the moment I’m sitting on my balcony in sunny Spain, working my way through the pre-course materials, and enjoying still being on holiday.

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