My name is Rhys. I am a 39 year-old primary school teacher at a school in south-western Sydney. I enjoy running, cooking, cheese-making, brewing (mostly kombucha), pickling, reading (not as much as I’d like), gardening (not very successfully) and drooling over #vanlife and #farmlife pictures on Instagram. I’m obsessed with VW vans (T2s and T3s - I own a beautiful 1984 blue T3 Trakka conversion campervan with pop-top) and one day hope to have a small farm with a few goats for cheese-making.
I live in a two-bedroom apartment not far from the city with my wife and cat. Each day I commute by train to the suburbs to educate a diverse group of 7-year-olds! It's a massive challenge and I take my responsibilities very seriously. I intend for most of my posts to be teaching-related, sharing some of my experiences and resources with other teachers.
I worked as a web developer for 13 years. I started working in 2000 for a small agency whose heyday was in the dot-com-boom-era that's still going today! I wasn't trained in computer science but at that time it was relatively easy to get a 'foot in the door'. I'd made a few student websites whilst studying for my Undergrad degree (Media & Communications and Sociology) and I was interested in seeing where this would take me. I started out at the bottom, updating content for static commercial websites until the folks I worked with were satisfied that I was capable. Then I started actually building stuff. I became a PSD-to-HTML monkey! As I was doing this I also became curious about what everyone else was doing. Some of the other developers were building websites using something called 'ASP'. I wondered what this was. I studied their code, trying to figure out what was going on. I convinced my boss to let me have a go at writing some of the server-side logic for smaller projects. It took me a long time to really understand what was going on but eventually I got the hang of it!
In 2004 I moved to London, originally for work. It was for the same company - they had a small office in London. Before that I worked on lots of projects for the folks in London so it made sense with the time difference to relocate there. There were no developers in the office when I arrived so that became a new challenge. I was used to bouncing ideas off colleagues when I came to a point where I was stuck. Another issue was developers (I'm generalising a lot here, sorry!) weren't as savvy with using google to find answers to their problems. My boss in London always suggested to just 'google it' if you were stuck and I thought, 'How can I google something when I don't know what to google?'. Anyway, I became more fluent in googling and things worked out. It wasn't long before another developer (and then another and another!) was hired as well, so that made things much easier! 'ASP' ('Classic ASP' as it became known!) soon became naff so we started building new projects using ASP.NET. This was something else I had to learn. After, the second developer in the London office (the one hired after me) left, he was replaced by a guy who'd had a lot of .NET experience and he helped to usher in the new age (so to speak!). Again, it took me a while but I eventually started writing C# code and writing components to plug into the company's proprietary systems!
Anyway, it was a real adventure. The first two to three years living in London felt like a working holiday. As most people know it's a great base for exploring parts of Europe. It's no coincidence that there are thousands of 20-something Antipodeans in London doing the same thing!
Also whilst in London I met the girl who many years later became my wife. She was so impressed by me that she agreed to move back to Sydney with me after I declared that the novelty of London life had worn off and I was growing tired of the rubbish weather! A holiday to Sydney in 2008 sealed the deal and in 2009 we put lots of stuff up for sale on ebay and gumtree in preparation for the big move. Of what was left over, we took what we didn't want to local charity shops that were kind enough to take our stuff, and things we didn't need (but couldn't part with) ended up in the attic of the kind parents-in-law-to-be.
So we arrived in Sydney in late 2009 for a fresh start! Fortunately we found jobs pretty quickly and we settled in to a lifestyle that we found a lot easier than London. I continued doing the same sort of work but this time my employer was a 'full-service' agency, meaning an old-school advertising agency that was also trying to do digital. The digital team was its own beast but often got its wires crossed with the account managers which made for an interesting experience. Things were OK for a few years, it was pretty hectic but I worked with a nice bunch of people so I was happy to go to work most days.
In 2012 I took four weeks off for a trip back to the UK. It was a lovely holiday. When I returned to work things were crazier than usual. There were several big projects underway and the one I was assigned to felt like the biggest hospital pass ever! It was a horrible experience. At the time a colleague said that we'd look back on this time in a few years and laugh about it and my first thought was 'Umm, no!'. Of course as the years passed, he was proven right. I can laugh about it now! Lots of us became very philosophical about life at this time with questions like 'What would you do if you weren't a developer?'. One thing I'd thought about doing a few times in the past was teaching. One thing I really enjoyed was helping other people to solve problems. I enjoyed trying to explain complex things in simple terms. I thought these skills might come in handy as a teacher. So that's what I said I'd want to do if I wasn't a developer ... and this stuck with me for days, and I started to look into what would be required to qualify as a teacher. During a weekend away I mentioned to my partner that I'd been looking into becoming a teacher. I was quite scared to mention it because I had no idea how this news would be received. She loved the idea. 'We'll make it work,' she said. Phew. Dodged a bullet there! She also talked about studying to become an accountant, which I hadn't expected either. But of course I said to her that if that's what you really want to do, then that's awesome.
So after that I decided that I would go for it. I put all my eggs into one basket and only applied for MTeach at Sydney University (because it was a 10-minute walk from where we lived!) and received an offer a few months later. I hadn't told my employer I was applying, so when I later handed in my notice it was a real shock. I became a full-time student at the age of 32. It was great being so close to uni. Financially we were fine. I took odd freelance jobs here and there with my old employer and during the summer holidays did some pretty well-paid short contract jobs. 18 months later I was qualified to teach.
My first experiences teaching after graduating were, like most new newbies, as a casual. You're thrown into the deep end but you learn to swim really fast! I'm sure we all remember our time at school as kids giving casual teachers a hard time. Well, I was on the receiving end. Realistically, the expectations from schools for casual teachers are pretty low. You're just expected to make it to the end of the day in one piece (you and the students). If you manage that you often get called back. You're able to experiment and use ideas you pick up in one class for another. If you have a hard day you can forget about it and start with a completely clean slate the next day.
At the start of 2016, I was lucky enough to be entrusted with my own class. I had a Year 3 class, which is a nice entry point for a new teacher. It was a lot more work than day-to-day casual teaching: marking, planning, parent interviews, reports, etc. Every teacher is familiar with the expectations! But this was the reason why I wanted to teach. I wanted my own class and really get to know a cohort and that's what I got. I absolutely love it!
I discovered steemit through interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies and I have high hopes for steemit as a platform. I don’t think there are many other teachers on here sharing their professional experiences at the moment but I am hoping this will change. I’ve been meaning to start a teaching blog for a while so I hope I can add value to what’s already out there on the internet!
In my next post, I'll discuss in more detail my expectations for this blog.
Me on holiday in Rome with a sweet old Citroen.
