How military service has informed my practice - Sailing into Teaching

@MenTeachPrimary have shared the story of how I began my teaching career in the Royal Navy and what these experience have brought to my teaching practice. You can read the article on their blog by clicking here.

The full article has also been reproduced below.

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Teaching was the back-up plan. I had always liked the idea of it, but it was something I planned on doing later in life.

My dream career was to be an Officer in the Royal Navy. It offered adventure, travel to far off lands and the opportunity to get a degree. University held no appeal to 18 year old me: chasing pirates and driving speedboats was a far more exciting way to get one. Maybe I would go into teaching once my Commission ended when I was 30?

So at the tender age of 18, I travelled to Britannia Royal Naval College (BRNC) to start my training to become an Officer in the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is not what you might assume the armed forces are like: there is no shouting and balling at people. When you have hundreds of people living, literally, on top of each other you need a colligate culture. Leadership was always about your role within the team, there was no place for egos. The leadership training at BRNC is some of the best in the world, with foreign navies sending their cadets to train alongside British officers. After BRNC, I spent a year at sea putting these leadership lessons in to practice.

I liked being at sea: adventure, comradeship and foreign ports. Brilliant! And it was at this point the wheels came off the bus. Or rather I came off a ladder, taking a 30-foot skydive into a compartment and smashing my ankle to smithereens. I was lucky it was the only thing I broke.

I was sent to a shore base to work in a Training Design and Quality Assurance team. It was dumb luck I was sent there. Initially the job was tedious but I was sharing an office with a team of Teaching Officers. It was through these brilliant people I found a love of teaching. Taking a big, complex piece of learning (like how to dismantle, maintain and reassemble a rocket launcher) and build and sequence the training for the student. I learnt how to design training, evaluate learning, lead change management, and construct policy papers and how to present to crowds of hundreds. I also used the time to gain my degree.

After 4 years and multiple surgeries the Royal Navy decided it was best I was sent on my way. So one hot July day I limped out of the main gates with a cheque to pay for my teacher training and some great experiences.

Initially, I didn’t think my time in the Navy would be of much use in teaching (except in geography lessons). Yet, there are many skills and experiences I call upon every day.

Leadership

My core role was leading a team of 30 sailors to achieve an aim. Leadership is being able to take a complex task and break it down into the smaller stages; to tell the story of why and how to complete a task. Teachers are leaders every day in every lesson. It also means leading yourself, taking the initiative to get the result. “Sometimes it is easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission”.

Teamwork

Allowing the team to get on with the job without you getting in the way. Giving students the time to make the learning their own without a teacher’s “help” being a hindrance. This also means instilling in children they are part of a bigger team, their actions have consequences upon all of us and they all rely upon each other. We don’t all have to be friends but we are all teammates.

Integrity

A strong sense of self: standing up and being counted. Taking responsibility for every success – and for every failure. The importance of speaking out and standing up for what is right. Is SATs a measuring exercise for the government that has no impact on a child’s future? Yes it is, and I tell parents and students the same.

With children, this means teaching them the importance of doing what is right, even if it might make you unpopular or lead to disagreement. If you see a classmate being unkind call them out on it, don’t wait to tell a teacher. Teaching children to do what is right, not what is popular.

Embracing change

In the RN, I moved jobs every 6 months. Embracing change and saying YES to opportunities allows for growth and successes you did not imagine. Last year I took on the lead for RE, a subject I knew nothing about nor had much interest. It has become one of my great passions, leading to me writing for TES and teachPrimary along with being invited to contribute to the national ReformingRE project.

Gumption

Or self-reliance and self-discipline. At sea there are no emergency services, everyone is trained as fire fighters. There is no next day delivery; you have to work with the tools and resources at hand. In the classroom, I encourage children to “fail fast and fail often”, learning from their attempts rather than waiting for help. To have a go and bend a task to what you can make of it rather than fretting over if the end result will be perfect.

My time in the Royal Navy proved a great basis for my teaching, instilling the importance of leadership and integrity that I try to pass on to my students. If you have been in the Armed Forces and are thinking of becoming a teacher, I cannot recommend the choice more highly.