My First School Based Role

     In a couple of weeks I'll begin volunteering at a local school! I have a friend on Facebook who put me in contact with a school who are always keen to take on volunteers. Wait a minute, I'll start from the start.....

     Way back in May when I first started thinking about going into teaching I mentioned it on Facebook. A woman I went to school with sent me a message saying that the school she worked at were always after volunteers. It's a school which deals predominantly with special needs. At the time I put it on the back burner because I was concentrating on getting a plan together for my future. To be honest I wasn't completely sure how far I'd get down the old career changing route. I did wonder if, at the age of 31, I had it in me to truly start again! So, in the intervening time I started college and got a full-time job at a care home. I started to believe that I could change career, that I could become a future Primary School teacher. Self belief is such an important thing and despite what I've had to do to get to this point in my life I still really struggle with it. It takes a lot for me to really believe in myself. I have had moments over the past six months where I've thought about returning to the safety of the kitchen. I know the kitchen, it's familiar, somewhere I feel safe and comfortable. It's not somewhere I want to return though because if I were to go back in, I'd never leave! Anyway, now I'm sorted at college, I've started thinking seriously about university and actually becoming a teacher. One of the things I'll need if I am to get into university is experience within a school so I got back in contact with my friend and on Thursday afternoon I popped to see the deputy head and I start in a couple of weeks! I'm really looking forward to it! I even told her I'm trans and she was fine with it.

     In other news it was my grandmas funeral last week and we gave her a good send off. I read the ulogy along with my two sisters and my cousin and my brother read a poem. It was what my grandma would've wanted, her 5 grandchildren together talking about her life. Before the funeral we'd gotten together and written some notes and then I put it all together so it flowed. It was nice to spend time with the family because it's not often that we all get together these days.

     It has been a crazy few weeks with lots of change and emotion. Change and emotion has kind of been the theme for the year though and I'm looking forward to doing my end of year posts. There's such a lot to look back on in 2013 and so much to talk about.