A tale of two Job Centres.

A tale of two Job Centres or: How going back to my moral purpose has reinvigorated my outlook.

I've never made much of a secret how much I love my job. I'm well aware of how insufferable I can be in that regard. However, just coming into lockdown back in March this passion was starting to become unfocused. Reaching a point in my career were the next steps seemed a bit vague, trying to map this out took up a lot of my thinking. To the extent that some other areas of my work became perfunctory. I knew it: I knew it was wrong and I knew this was draining me. 

Over the summer I was fortunate enough to be able to spend sometime reflecting on my vision and values: what is actually important to me? Ultimately, what am I in all this for? It was this thinking that took me back to two job centre visits in 2012 when I was signing on.

In that summer, I had arrived back in England after spending a few years teaching English in Korea. With no job lined up, I signed on at Brombrough job centre. The first appointment was fine, the guy was very helpful and understanding. Fortunately, whilst looking for work, I was accepted on to a PGCE for the following year. At my next appointment I mentioned this to my advisor. His sneer, "Well you can't stay on this until then!" I can hear to this day. 

Despite my assurances that this was not my plan and I was actively looking for work - lord knows I needed the money! - he did his level best to humiliate me. Putting me forward for every job on the screen regardless of suitability, location or my opinion. All with constant negative references to my plan to start a PGCE. Towards the end he asked if I had plans for the weekend? On learning I would be visiting my extended family, I was asked to fill in a permission form. I had to detail where I would be and a contact number, should they need to call me in for an interview. I left the appointment feeling as small and powerless as I ever have. 

A feeling I've never forgotten.

Not long after I switched Job Centres to one in Bootle, my place of birth and where I was then living. Waiting for an appointment one morning I was sat opposite a mother with a young son. The second experience I'll never forget. 

The boy must have been eight or nine and was holding an old PlayStation 2 game bought from C-ex, one of the Tony Hawks games. He was holding the game with all the reverence a Priest might hold the Eucharist. Sat slightly behind on the couch, the mother was beaming with the pride of having given him something so precious. Finally taking his eyes of the game, he turned to his mum with a look of pure love and cuddled himself into her. That look, of pride, joy and feeling special is something I've never forgotten. 

Luckily my name was called or I might have been caught welling up from across the waiting room. 

So what have these two got to do with my outlook on teaching? Well a couple of things.

 Firstly, I've always wanted to serve in a community where good teaching could perhaps make the biggest difference: communities like those served by that Bootle job centre. The idea that I could be part of an institution that gives children a sense of joy, pride and to feel like they are part of something, in possession powerful knowledge and can engender in adults pride in their child's achievements. This drive has been refreshed by keeping the memory of that family in mind. Since doing so, I have been lucky enough to recognise that scene again and again through small interactions with my students and their families. Even in the darkest of days otherwise. It is a wonderful, humbling feeling. 

 Secondly, the way I interact with others has been shaped by that first described visit. In all likelihood I'd caught that gentleman on a bad day, doing a tough job. But, what if I could be part of a place that even in the smallest of ways, reduced the chances of anyone else having a conversation like that? Reduced the chances of someone made to feel small and powerless? Either through modelling it through my own interactions, or teaching that looking out for the tiny acts of decency and striving to treat everyone with compassion. The belief that in small ways we really can make the world a better place.

Ulimately, these are what I'm in it for. The promise of this service to others, because for me this really, really matters. So these are my measures. Day in, day out. I can't think of a greater motivation or challenge: If I can end the day having in some small way done something that's sent a child home with even a fraction of that feeling or given cause for someone to act that little bit more compassionately, then I'll rest easy: if not what can I do better tomorrow? Everything else: progress, achievements, academic success will be the artefacts of this. 

They are also my guides, will the next step or decision increase my ability to further my promise? I'll make mistakes, missteps and bad choices of course, but I hope I can look back and honestly say I based it on those principles.

And so if I may be so bold as to offer any advice on the back of this, it would be this: hold on to your purpose. Make that purpose as real and as visible as it can be. There'll be times, for short or long, where the day to day journey grinds us down. Make that purpose the star that guides you through the grind.