Schinckel.net

I think lots of people I know are shocked when they hear I am stopping teaching at the end of this year, and going back to Uni. For those that do know me, and haven’t heard, I’m heading back to Uni, and intend to complete a postgrad Bachelor of Computer Science at Flinders Uni. After that, I may or may not return to teaching. I’ve written this essay from the point of view that I won’t.

Many people, when I mention I am a teacher talk about the endless holidays, and the short work hours. Whilst to some extent I will miss these (having a nice long break at the end of the school year, plus another three lots of a fortnight off at a time are pretty nice, and being able to escape at 3:10 like I did today is also kinda cool), there are lots of reasons for me not to remain a teacher.

For starters, I get bored very easily if I am not doing stuff that challenges me intellectually. Nothing against teaching woodwork and metalwork, and I really do enjoy making stuff with my hands, but I’m really glad that I just finished teaching kids how to create a cake tin. Never again will I have to go through that process.

I’m not really sure why I became a teacher to begin with. It was probably a bit of an accident. I started out doing a Computer Systems Engineering degree, but at 16 I really wasn’t mature enough to handle independent living and study. I was clever, but perhaps not as smart as I thought. After doing miserably in some subjects that I should have breezed through, I had to look for alternatives. I worked for six months, met the love of my life, and decided to become a teacher.

Because I had spent more than one full year at University already, my entrance into another course was based solely on my achievement level in the previous course. Whilst I had some High Distinctions (including Programming in C, and Discrete Mathematics), I had an awful lot of failing grades, and the only teaching degree I was offered a place in was Technology Education. In some ways, I’m really glad I got into that course. If I hadn’t put it on my list, then I really don’t like to think where I’d be now. And, I learned some fantastic skills in that course, that I use in my home life as well as at work.

I’ve never fully enjoyed teaching. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things I do like about it, like getting to know some great people (kids as well as teachers), but I was never satisfied. I probably wouldn’t go back and change anything in my first few years of work - discovering Touch Football for instance totally changed my life - but towards the end of my five years at Windsor Gardens, I was really ready for a change. I thought a change of school was all I needed, but I was wrong. I needed a change of occupation.

So, making another wrong decision I moved to my current school. As with a new job, everything was okay for a little while. I had some new challenges, and some new opportunities. Around this time last year I was offered the chance to teach Stage 2 (final year of High School) Information Technology Studies. Perhaps, I rationalised, this was what I needed to do. Teach another subject, something I might find a little more interesting and exciting.

But this too, wasn’t the right decision. I was gung-ho at the start of the year. I’d done some preparatory work, but the amount I could do was limited since I didn’t want to do stuff that wasn’t relevant (the Curriculum Statement was in flux at that stage). I was like a man possessed, writing assessment tasks and the like. And I quite enjoyed it.

But, as the year dragged on, I realised I still wasn’t happy. It wasn’t until I re-did Jaq’s website that I realised what was missing. I’d been writing about coding, and doing a very small amount (but all the time limiting the depth of stuff I was doing, since I had to try to teach concepts to kids, and get them to do the coding), but redoing the website made me realise: I want to do stuff, instead of teach stuff.

This was something, when I look back, I’ve been subconsciously doing all along. At times, when I’ve got a group of kids doing something practical, I’ll create a project too. If they are getting me down, then I’ll focus on what I’m doing. Whether it’s a cake tin, or something more substantial, I really enjoy making stuff. Turning up bowls on a wood lathe, writing a computer program, it’s all good.

When I built Jaq’s website (credit where it is due: she designed it, I just made it work!), I had a couple of tasks that required some serious thought. The first was the actual page layout code, including the JavaScript that controls loading of new images onto the page rather than a complete reload. This is designed to reduce bandwidth, but also make for a more seamless user experience. This wound up being a fair bit of work, but most of that work was getting it to work in Internet Explorer.

The other thing I ended up doing was writing a pair of application programs. One of them attached tags to image files (using xattrs, which work on OS X and some other platforms, but don’t copy from machine to machine very well at times, so I’d rethink before using the same system). The other one generated HTML code from a folder full of images and text files. This was planned so that Jaq can just replace an image, set of images, or textual content, including making significant changes (like changing the number of items), and the program creates the whole website from the templates.

This was an interesting solution, and if I were to redo it again (which I may at some stage) then I would probably consider using PHP, and having all of the HTML data generated on the fly, rather than in advance. Doing it all in python was a piece of cake, and it helped me realise that I really do love coding.

I’ve done plenty of coding for myself in the past decade-and-a-bit that I haven’t been doing anything much work-wise that has been related to this. I can’t remember exactly when I taught myself python, or javascript, or AppleScript. I know that at least some of these had to have been in the past decade, but I do recall doing some python a long, long time ago. Version 1.5.2 rings a bell.

I could conceivably find myself a job now in this industry, but I’d much prefer an opportunity to go back to study, and ensure that I have the right sort of skills. Even though it will result in me having to learn Java, which I’ve put off for ages, I think that it’s the best approach.

Deep down, I’ve known this is what I should have done. I just wish I’d made the decision earlier.