200km Wide Fingertip

Feel proud of your profession and your craft. We hold a unique place, planting knowledge and skills, without knowing how or where they’ll sprout. We are artists, writers, musicians, psychologists, mathematicians, and counsellors. Sometimes, all at once.

A college lecturer, during my pre-service training, boasted that the teaching preparation courses (of which he was a part) did little to prepare us for the real world. He was right. 

The studied courses gave us, I believe, resilience.

The going got tough, as I knew it would. More than once, I relied on the framework I built during those study years. 

Nearing the end of my first teaching year, the principal told me I had three charming characteristics that would influence my further employment. I was both shocked (had I done something to upset the hierarchy) and flattered (maybe I had impressed the hierarchy.)

He noted my look of confusion, explaining that neither was the case. I ticked three boxes that set me up for a teaching stint in the bush: young, single, male. He suggested getting proactive and giving the higher ups something to work with. 

So, I wrote them a letter detailing my preferred options for ‘bush service.’ Depending on the scale of map used, my right index finger was up to 200km wide as I traced a path along Queensland’s coastline from Cooktown to Coolangatta. Any town my finger touched went onto my shortlist.

It gave them something to work with and true to scale, I landed 198km from the coast in Central Queensland.

Thus began many years of experiencing different schools, communities, students, parents and staff. At each place and in each new situation, my pre-service resilience was with me. I wonder, now the career is done, where and how some of those seedlings have sprouted. 

More to come …