On the bench
When I worked in schools as a teacher I absolutely loved it. On multiple occasions I remarked that I would do that kind of work for free. Of course, I was younger, and didn’t have as many responsibilities in my life.
Since that time, I’ve worked at a university, for tech companies, and founded my own consultancy business as well as a co-operative. But nothing has been as fulfilling as teaching.
There’s actually nothing to stop me going back into the classroom. But I’m not sure that looking backwards is the best way to go about planning for the future. As a result, and especially with being under-employed this year, I’ve felt a bit like I’ve been ‘on the bench’.
I’m ready to come on and play my part, and in fact have been adding different facets to ‘my game’ through the MSc I’ve started and keeping up-to-date with various developments — particularly in AI. But I’m not entirely sure what to do next. What’s the second half of my career going to look like?
Perhaps I’m just going through the entirely predictable midlife slump. Perhaps I just need to stop waiting for the right opportunity to present itself and instead go and create it.
I’ve been following your posts for a while and am in awe how you post everything you think about. I too was a teacher before getting into the world of interoperability; for me focusing on machine readable standards (have led CASE implementations at several orgs as well as previous specification workgroup leadership roles) in various ways and companies. I’ve thought about substitute teaching a bit or coaching my kids sports teams there’s nothing like actively working to teach kids something like exponents and see them be able to understand it and apply that knowledge in novel ways you didn’t explicitly teach them.
Thanks Brandon, writing helps me with the thinking process. Good to know that others feel the same about the joy of teaching kids! I tried my hand at being a Scout leader, but it wasn’t a great fit. Perhaps I should try football coaching…