HEAD BLOG

Many years ago, I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

The idea of engaging with young minds, being inspirational and starting my own religion and army certainly influenced the decisions I was making around that time. The application form seemed like a formality.

Wanting to capitalise on every advantage I might have in order to wow the course leaders I drafted in the assistance of my sister, already a teacher and a formidable and persuasive presence in her own right.

With her help I wrote a letter filled with the terminology of the day. She knew what boxes to tick and I wasn’t afraid of ticking them all. Attainments, engagements, inspirings – I grabbed them all.

Secret weapon deployed I sat back and waited to be called for interview.

Now, if you are with me so far then you’ll be expecting there to be no interview. You’ll expect me to turn this around and show how getting someone else to do all the work for me didn’t pay off in the end.

If that’s the case then you’d be wrong.

I did get the interview.

Within weeks I was sat in a room at Manchester University going through my application with two of the course leaders.

They asked me a question, a simple enough question:

“Why do you want to be a teacher?”

Easy.

I’d had the same question back on the application form.

I couldn’t, however, remember what I’d written. Something about shaping minds, being interested in educational development – that sort of thing.

So I started to talk.

I opened up about why I wanted to teach. I told stories of the teachers who had inspired me. I talked about my genuine, heart-felt love of English.

I don’t think I mentioned wanting to raise an army.

But I had their attention.

It was only a matter of time before I had my own school. Screw post-grad diplomas. I was on fire.

At the end of my outburst one of the teachers asked me why I hadn’t written all that in my application letter.

That floored me.

So I told them the truth.

I took a deep breath and explained that my sister helped me because I really really wanted to be a teacher and because she was a teacher she knew what other teachers wanted and why they wanted it. She knew the language used in all the literature and then copied by other teachers and so, I explained, I assumed that using all that knowledge in one massive burst of jargon would help me get an interview.

The course leaders listened and then told me one thing: that I nearly didn’t get called for interview because my application was so obviously not my own words.

It was quite the lesson.