EDN550 Assignment One

Autobiography
My family moved to Perth half way through my primary school education
from the eastern states, we also moved for 18 months to the USA, six
months into year eight. After this 18 months I returned to the same high
school to complete year 12.

In brief I did not finish year 12 as successfully as I had the potential to do,
in part due to family health issues, so I went to TAFE and completed an
Associate Diploma. From there I continued my learning journey with an
Apprenticeship at a university library. Once this was completed there was not
a full-time job available so using my Associate Diploma I enrolled in a
Bachelor of Arts part-time while I continued to work.

By necessity and chance I have worked and studied in different fields which
has given me a broad knowledge base and an understanding that life does
not always follow a linear educational path. This is an idea that I feel is
important to pass on to students; that there are always alternative pathways
in life and education, and that an obstruction at one stage does not mean an
end to a desired outcome.

Post-Secondary my educational experiences have been predominantly

positive and allowed me to learn about how I learn, and what sort of
environment I find supportive in that process. It has also highlighted many
of the things that I found lacking in my secondary education. Due to the
move overseas during year eight and nine I missed many foundation skills. I
had had no formal introduction into how to write an essay or how to
approach a maths investigation to give two prominent examples. There was

EDN550 Assignment One

never any review of these skills or recognition that I may not have covered
these skills because I was in another country with a completely different
educational structure. It took a friend who is an ESL teacher to teach me the
basics of essay writing and that there is more than one type of essay. This
occurred years after completing secondary school. This made me feel
incredibly let down by my secondary school teachers and started the thought
process of how can I prevent someone else from finding themselves in a
similar situation of wanting to learn but not having some of the basic skill to
approach that education.

While my own negative educational journey has influenced my desire to

become a teacher it was further cemented by observations made, as a
parent helper, in a number of my childrens classrooms. In this setting I
observed practices which did not sit well with my ideas of what should be
happening in a modern day classroom setting. Here I saw the
teacher/student power structure was used in a punitive and shaming fashion
and reactive behavioural management practices with a student who had a
recognised Learning Disabilities. These were isolated incidences within the
whole day but they reinforced and reminded me of my own negative
personal experiences in the classroom. I again began to question the
learning environment I want my children to experience.

All of this has lead me to this point and place, where I hope I can learn to
have a positive impact on future students and their educational
environment.