Introducing Me: My Autistic Journey to Teaching
A few months ago becoming a maths teacher felt like a vague dream to me, although admittedly one I had been imagining for years. Now, I have a place confirmed to begin my initial teacher training in September. I plan to dive deep into the application process, my motivations and my course in the future, however first I want to talk a little bit about how I got here.
I was originally interested in becoming a maths teacher towards the end of my time at university. My original dream was to become an academic, but I had struggled with my mental health during my final year and I was too burnt out to think about continuing. A lot of my motivation to become an academic was because of my desire to teach, I wanted to lecture more than I wanted to research, so I thought that becoming a maths teacher instead could be an excellent path for me.
I looked through the options available to me: the university route, the school based route and a slightly different route, Teach First. Teach First is an educational charity with the goal of righting the wrongs of the education attainment gap in the UK between pupils in poverty and pupils who are not. This mission aligned with me, I come from a working class family myself and the idea of giving back to students like me appealed to me very much. I applied and got accepted.
I soon realised there were some potential downsides to Teach First however. Forums online described their programme (two years rather than the usual one for teacher training) as incredibly intense. I was struggling with anxiety, depression and agoraphobia at the time and I convinced myself that I would not have been able to cope with the programme. I was probably right.
In fact, upon reflection, I didn't feel ready to teach in general. I do think that one reason I felt this way was that I was Autistic. I'll save my autism journey for another time, but this worry that I was different and not suitable to become a teacher was certainly something I thought about. I concede that looking back now, I don't think that I had done a fraction of the research into the career that I should have, and now have. I instead decided to pursue a career in a different area, data.
My first role was, in hindsight, exactly the job I needed as an autistic person struggling with burnout. I had been working too many hours during my third year which, combined with my worsening mental health, had led me to learning most of my degree content from lecture recordings, often in huge batches at a time. This worked for me and I did well but it did lead me to become exhausted and burnt out by the time I finished. In contrast, my new role was quite relaxed, especially compared to the retail jobs I was used to. There was an endless body of work to be getting on with but none of it felt too difficult (when I'd gotten over the initial shock to my system caused by all of the change). I was quite happy for about six months or so.
I found that when I had learnt all of the different tasks I needed to complete I got quite bored in my work. Initially I was very excited to be learning new things. But when the novelty wore off. I decided that I would be a much better fit in a more analytical role. After a couple of years, I got there. Again, it was fantastic at first. I got to enjoy doing some real problem-solving, applying skills I had developed during my degree. The issue again was that after learning most of what I needed, I started to become bored and depressed.
I also think a big issue causing dissatisfaction however was where I was working. I was fully remote. I barely left the house and found agoraphobia a far too comfortable pair of shoes to slip back into. I realised that I needed two things: firstly, a job that was in person (when leaving the house frequently my agoraphobia was effectively eliminated); secondly, I needed a job where I would never stop learning (the amount of learning I could do in my role was naturally capped, and progression felt unlikely).
Teaching again reared its head as a potential idea. I mulled it over for about six months. Everything I had ever heard told me that teaching was a relentless career, completely unlike what I was doing at the moment. Teachers don't get to enjoy their weekends and evenings like I could, couldn't roll out of bed and into work and certainly could never experience the luxury of being bored. The thing is, I felt like my work had no purpose, like I was not contributing anything unique, that tomorrow I could drop off the face of the Earth and it wouldn't make a difference. The idea of a career where I would have too much put on me actually appealed to me.
Without intending it I had created a situation where I never had to do anything difficult. As previously mentioned, I am Autistic. Some of the ways this affects me in particular are finding social situations difficult, struggling to maintain friendships, difficulty with taste and textures, sensitivity to loud noises and bright lights, a strong sense of justice and wanting to talk far too much about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, all fairly stereotypical traits. But it had also led to me developing anxiety and agoraphobia and also to feeling like I had to hide away so as not to let my inherent "badness" infect others. Working remotely had allowed me to give in to these parts of me. I never had to socialise so I didn't. I never had to try new foods so I avoided it. I could do my work just fine without having friends.
The truth is though that this destroyed me a little bit over time. I need to feel I am growing to be satisfied. I tried to introduce positive things in my life: I found a local cafe I enjoyed going to, started swimming again for exercise and enjoyment and started tracking the films I was watching to force myself to engage with new experiences. This has improved my mental health but this only actually intensified the feeling that changing my career was ultimately what I needed to do. I knew that to be satisfied, I needed to push myself.
So I decided to become a maths teacher. My motivations for teaching specifically, as opposed to another more social career, are actually a bit more extensive than I've outlined here but I think that's worth a post of its own. I extensively sought out and consumed every teaching related forum, blog post and podcast I could. Some recommendations by the way are the r/TeachingUK subreddit, the My PGCE podcast by James Brown, and the book How I Wish I’d taught Maths by Craig Barton. I also managed to get some experience in a school. This was such an interesting experience for me that I think it deserves its own post also.
For the first time in my life I finally feel like I have a purpose. I know exactly where I want to be, where I think I have the potential to excel and make a real difference. I know that this is going to be a very difficult journey. A PGCE isn't easy for a neurotypical person, I genuinely don't know how I'll find it. But what I do know is that I want this, more than I've wanted anything in my life so far. I used to believe that being Autistic closed off certain doors to me, that I was broken in some fundamental way. But I realise now that's not the case. Accepting that has given me the permission I needed to pursue the career that I knew I wanted all along.