Once the kids were up a bit I took up Creative Writing again, getting some short stories and poems published and enjoying some successes in Cleveland's Writearound Festival. As a result of this a few local schools asked me to help with their Literacy projects, by which I was honestly flattered. So then I designed and ran some creative writing workshops with the children and their parents, culminating in the production of a collection of the children's work which is still used in the school today. But the most rewarding aspect of this was the delight - on both adult and child's face - when they proved to themselves they could indeed write on a creative level.
This was such a positive experience that I began working voluntarily as a teaching assistant, in between educational courses, for several years. Since then I've served as a Parent Governor and gained both a Teaching Assistant and a Special Needs Assistant certificate, and decided to enter the teaching profession. To that end I gained GCSE's in English and Maths, a PG certificate in I.T. (using scanners, the internet and Microsoft software such as Excel, Access, Word and Publisher), and a 2:1 Honours Degree in English and History.
My most successful achievement as an undergraduate was the key role I played in the production of a History Resource Pack to be used in several local schools. During the vacation period I forged links and contacts in the local community, and researched and established resources for the project. During term time I arranged meetings, contributed to the ideas and negotiations for the resource pack's contents, helped maintain our group's morale and cohesiveness - which wasn't difficult as they were a great bunch of people - and ensured that the work was delivered to a high quality standard by the deadline date. This was a very challenging and rewarding project, the results of which were held in high esteem by our tutor.
I was then accepted onto Durham University's Teacher Training programme in Sept '99 and taught English and Drama in Secondary Schools until February '00. Taking into account some extremely important issues, though, and despite my unblemished success and my love of the job, I decided that a career in Secondary School teaching wasn't suitable at this time. However I came away with a large amount of transferable skills: as such I am articulate; can work independently and in a team; am extremely organized; am able to task prioritize and meet deadlines; have excellent IT and presentational skills; have good problem-solving skills and am imaginative, creative, flexible, efficient and patient.
Currently (Feb 2001) I've just completed a Multimedia Design course and have begun studying courses in Professional Proofreading, Editing and Copywriting. From this site you can see I've also been getting into web-page production (I've used Publisher and several on-site programmes), so as you can see I'm not happy unless I have some project or other brewing! |
