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Paths to Success – Programmer & Teacher

Posted on August 20, 2018August 13, 2018 by Holly Billinghurst

In the fifth of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Darren Barnett who, in a similar turn of events to me adjusted his career in software development into teaching. He’s now teaching A Level Computer Science at Sussex Downs College, but in his previous career he worked in video games development as a producer and programmer.

For those of you who have not been following the series so far, this year I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.

To start this Paths To Success series I had to accept that as a teacher my previous employment and growing businesses likely means very little to my students (and rightly so, I am just one person in an industry that they know). Instead, I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.

Hi Darren, You’ve had quite a varied career. Could you tell me a little bit more about it?

I’ve worked all over the world with the video games job, America (often), Australia, Japan, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, France & Italy. It was really interesting to work with people from other cultures, some seem very like home (Australia) and some are excitingly different (Japan). It’s been really interesting to go from programming with fairly small teams initially to working on huge video game projects with many people.

When I started programming we mainly programmed in MS-DOS and Windows was seen as a bit of a novelty. Most games programmers programmed in assembler at the time!

In my second job as a programmer I worked in the PC team which was two people alongside a CD-i team which was far bigger and now hardly anyone remembers CD-i (it was a kind of interactive video format from Philips that came on huge laser discs).

Working in education now is really interesting – I very much like teaching A Level & BTEC and I like the creativity of working in Computer Science. It’s also really cool when you get questions that stretch your own brain from students as well as when you help someone to make progress when they were really struggling.

Being a teacher gives us a new perspective on education, but could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.

I failed my 11 plus which was a bit of a shock at the time as I assumed I would pass (my whole primary school failed the 11 plus!!!) and went to what we called a High school. This was still at the time when kids could leave at 14 and also if you went to the High school they assumed that lots of kids would leave without any exam passes at all!

I did OK at school – especially as the expectations were pretty low across the board and I had some very good teachers – especially for Maths & English which stuck with me. I had a lot of dreadful ones too – my Sociology teacher refused to teach me as I insisted on doing O level and he only wanted to teach CSE (as the exams were split then) – but contrary to my expectations I managed to get a U! I had assumed that Sociology was mostly about ranting about how unfair the world is / was!

I ended up with 9 O levels eventually (despite the Sociology blip) – partly helped by the fact that you could do Maths & Additional Maths then! After that I went on to the 6th form which I really liked – you make great friends in the 6th form and the atmosphere which much better. I even ended up as a senior prefect despite being a punk rocker with green or blue hair – as that was fairly new then you could have nose piercings etc as there were no rules about things like that…

With it coming up to the start of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?

It’s so long ago that I can’t remember the names well – I think Mrs Millington was my Maths teacher and she was very good – otherwise I just remember the nicknames of the teachers.

There was still corporal punishment then too, so teachers hitting kids sticks in the mind unfortunately – I never got caned but you were in danger of a board rubber being thrown at you – I assume they tried not to aim for your head!

Lots of our students are or will be in the process of applying to college or university right now. Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university?

I really liked college and Uni a lot – when I left the 6th form I took a year out and worked for 6th months and also went to college in the evening – I don’t know how it was possible in those days but I did A level sociology in the evenings after work for about 6 months and got a C which is a decent step up from the U…

My first degree was a BA in Religion and Philosophy which I loved – also I liked Brighton so much I decided to live here – it was a great degree and very interesting.

Ironically all the way through school to the end of my degree I had hardly touched a computer apart from to play Space Invaders at the swimming pool! My IT skills were so poor I had to get my friend in the business studies department to help me to use a word processor for my dissertation (although to be fair word processors then were on a main frame and were pretty complex)!

Is there any advice you would want to give to students who recently received exam results?

Your life is probably going to change in a major way more than once in terms of your career – I would say make sure you take any opportunities you can and throw yourself into them. It’s amazing what you can succeed in and just because you can’t do something now doesn’t mean you won’t necessarily be amazing at it in the future!

Thank you so much to Darren for giving up his time to show my students that the path to success doesn’t always start from the easiest of foundations (and that our teachers are much nicer now!)

Darren can be found on LinkdIn where you can see more about his teaching career.

Paths To Success – Electrician & Entrepreneur

Posted on July 30, 2018July 30, 2018 by Holly Billinghurst

In the second of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Donna Lister who showed me that it wasn’t just me who took a right angle career turn!

This year, I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.

So instead, with exam results fast approaching I decided to buck the trend of the many posts telling students that “results don’t matter” (they do, you worked hard), or “I didn’t need GCSEs” (no, but you had something else) and create a positive set of real careers stories to help motivate both my students and other teachers. I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.

Donna Lister fully qualified female electrician. I have been running my own electrical business in London for over 12 years, but she hasn’t always been an electrician. Often we talk about STEM jobs being the areas where women are under-represented, so it was great to chat to a female electrician and entrepreneur.

Hi Donna, could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.

I found school rules really annoying and always tried to break them! However, I did quite well at school academically.

Now that sounds familiar! In fact I think my rebellious streak has stayed with me into adulthood. Have you found the same?

Oh, I hope so! A few people told me I’d never make it as an electrician, so of course that made me more determined than ever! When I was younger and broke, I changed parts on my car despite being told by the ‘man’ at the garage that there was no way I’d figure it out. I remember driving past the garage in my car after I fixed it and tooting my horn at him!!

With it being the end of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?

I guess my maths teacher, Mr Lewis inspired me. He taught me A level applied maths at St Cyres Comprehensive in Penarth, South Wales. I remember him being quite funny but also strict – he would sometimes throw the board rubber (essentially a wooden block!) at you if you weren’t paying attention. This was in the days when it was OK to do this, of course!

Lots of my students are in the process of applying to college or university right now. Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university

After leaving Uni I realized the career I had chosen wasn’t for me, so I took another post grad course. I think I must get bored really easily as I have swapped careers lots! However, all my past experience make me what I am, so I never view it as ‘wasted’.

I had a mid life crisis and gave up my job as a charity director to retain as an electrician – most people thought I was bonkers, but that just spurred me on! Best thing I ever did – being self employed has given me the freedom to do other things – travel, learn new skills outside of work and now I’m setting up another business (completely non related to electrics)

Wow! So what made you choose electrician as your new career? Has it been different going into that field as a woman?

I’d always been interested in DIY and enjoyed maths too. I didn’t fancy plumbing because of the ‘yuck’ element, so electrics seemed to be the logical choice – it can be quite lucrative if you are prepared to work hard. Some years, I certainly earned more than I made at the charity. I honestly think that being a women has helped me, I know that some of my customers choose me because they prefer to have a female working in thier home. However, you still need to be good at your job and super organised.

After being a successful electrician for 12 years, you’re setting up a new business – can we have a sneak peek at what it is?

I’m at an age now where I need reading glasses. But while wearing them I can’t put my makeup on as they get in the way! GRRR! So a friend (who has the same problem) and I decided to develop a solution – after 2 years of product design, protoyping and testing – FlipZees magnifying makeup glasses were born! Of course we’re now having to learn a whole new set of skills around beauty marketing, website development, social media and sales. You can take a look here www.flipzeesglasses.com

Is there any advice you would want to give to students receiving exam results this year?

When I look back to where I started to where I am now, I am quite amazed at how on earth I got here! There was no plan! So don’t worry too much about making the ‘right’ choices now – you are on the start of a long journey and you can always take a different path! In fact, that’s the fun bit!

Thank you so much to Donna for giving up her time to show my students that the path to success isn’t always as we planned and that twists and turns in life really are just part of the journey!

Donna can be found at www.atb-electrical.co.uk where you can find out more about the qualifications needed to become an electrician. Or you can watch her interview with Two-Fifty Volts here:

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How To Write A Great Student Reference

Posted on June 1, 2018July 30, 2018 by Holly Billinghurst

It’s something that I’ve been asked to do across the academic year and each time I write a reference for a student I realise that these is a real art to it. So as we hurtle rapidly into the time of year where we are writing references for college or UCAS, here’s how to write great references without sacrificing your need for sleep.

Use a Writing Frame

I’m not suggesting that you use a template to write your references and just fill in the names. Therein lies a truly dreadful reference. Instead, consider the aspects of the reference that you want to write about for each student and adjust accordingly. The example below is one that I use regularly for my subject UCAS references:

How have they engaged with the subject?
Have they indicated that this is their chosen subject? If not, how will it help?
What extra curricular activities / volunteering have they undertaken?
What have their exam/test results been compared to their target?
Have they started their coursework? What is the topic?
End on a return to their chosen subject

Using this, we could write the reference:

“A methodical and dedicated learner, David has studied Computer Science with me for the past year arriving in year 12 having not studied the subject at GCSE. Despite being behind his peers at the start of the year he has made tremendous efforts to catch up, attending numerous Computing Clubs and extending his knowledge outside of the curriculum in our robotics club which led to his interest to study AI.

It is clear that his targeted grade of a B was initially a challenge, however based on the clear upwards progress within our class tests and mock exams I have little doubt that his choice to take the subject further at University is the correct path for him.

David has commenced his A Level NEA project making AI the basis of his investigation and has already begun to complete a complex project linking the Twitter API to a machine learning algorithm. This, along with his strong exam results to date indicates both enthusiasm and aptitude to study Computer Science further.”

Keep To The Point!

Usually, a UCAS subject reference is no more than three paragraphs, so I group the six questions into two per paragraph, and for some students they won’t be relevant so I omit them entirely. For longer references for US universities or apprenticeship applications, having all six questions as a writing frame helps me to focus on the student as an individual rather than just stating what they have completed as facts.

Imagine that you were the admissions officer, or employer reading the reference – a statement of fact is tantamount to a bad reference. You know your students; you are the person best placed to get across their ability to be an ambassador for the subject that you love.

We know report and reference writing is a tedious process and eats into our evenings when the sun is shining, but those few lines of personal praise can be the difference between a foot in the door to their chosen career and a line of applications elsewhere.

You are their first step up; They have to climb the stairs.

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