A legacy of learning

Once upon a time I was a natural environmental science graduate, and one of my dilemmas at age 21 was whether or not to undertake a funded PhD on peat bog reclamation. There is no need to cut a long story short at this point, because it really didn’t take me long to decide. It was the PhD or my PGCE, and the lure of teaching was strong. I based my decision on the comparison of spending my days in lively classrooms or toiling in a windswept and eerily quiet landscape. I am also a bit of an impatient person at times, and the idea of the slow scrutiny of the ecosystem with at least three years before anyone was likely to gain insight from my research, compared to the urgent demands of planning lessons, creating relationships and experiencing the learning of others was very stark. So, I became a teacher.  Thence followed a decade teaching geography, followed by what is now nearly two decades in universities working in the field of teacher education, far away from that promised peat bog.