Introduction

The decision to pursue the Higher Diploma in Further Education was an easy one. I knew exactly what I wanted and worked very hard to get it. In fact it was a three year journey to get myself to a point where I could complete it successfully. Three years ago I wasn’t the same person I am today. A couple of years before I had been diagnosed with a chronic illness. This illness caused me to retreat into myself and the medication turned me into a mere shadow of the person I was. I wasn’t really living, I was just there. I had no quality of life and quite frankly, I was beginning to become depressed and anxious. There was a day, I don’t remember exactly what triggered it, but I decided this couldn’t be my life forever. I used to have dreams and here I was letting them die. I had heard of a medication, one that people with my illness were having great results with. The problem was that none of my current doctors would prescribe them. So I found myself another one. Believe me when I tell you, that man saved my life. He took me off all of the medication that was making me a zombie and placed me on this new medication. He asked me what I wanted. I told him that I had wanted, for as long as I could remember, to be a teacher. I distinctly remember at 7 years old being determined to either be the President of Ireland or a teacher. Although I spent some time deviating slightly from this goal, I always came back to teaching. My oldest brother once told me that I was destined to be a teacher, I think now that he has always been right (Don’t tell him I said that).

This initial consultation led me on the path to achieving my goals and getting my life back. I set about researching teacher training courses. I knew I didn’t particularly want to teach secondary school. There are a number of very multi-layered reasons behind this but a main one would be a deep dislike of the leaving cert and everything it entails. I was inspired, very much, by one of the lecturers I had for the Graduate Diploma in Computer Science. His name was Tom, he was the first teacher I had who saw his learners as equals. He was calm and approachable, he explained even the most complex computer science terms in a way that anyone could understand. Tom was the kind of teacher I wanted to be. I watched as he influenced the lives of all of the people in that class. We ranged from straight out of our undergraduate degrees to people who had careers in other fields for 10 or 15 years. So, the goal shifted slightly, from just teaching, to teaching adults. That’s when I first came across the HDFE on the Maynooth website. I set my sights on it and I was determined to get there.

Learning to cope with a long-term illness requires small steps to be taken at a time. I started out volunteering with Age Action. Their Getting Started program is run one day a week for two hours. It provides one to one tuition for people wanting to learn computer skills.
I eventually added in a second volunteer position, then a paid one and another until I was out of the house 4 days a week teaching. I kept this schedule for an entire year before putting in my application for the HDFE. I still had to pace myself, I had to ensure that there were adequate rest periods in which I had nothing to do and nowhere to be. I needed to build myself up and going for too much too soon had the potential to be detrimental to the fragile health I had built up. I made sure I knew I could give this course the commitment it deserved before applying and I’m very glad I did.

It has not been an easy year. It’s been hectic. Between classes, assignments, teaching practice, volunteer work and regular work it was incredibly overwhelming at times. I am a lot of things besides a student teacher, I’m a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a friend and my favourite (and newest) role, an auntie. It became a delicate juggling act to manage all of the moving pieces of my life while trying to study for the HDFE. My parents live outside Dublin, therefore they barely saw me for weeks at a time. I have friends I haven’t seen since before Christmas and others since before the start of the course. I am extremely lucky to have these people. My family, boyfriend and close friends have been unwavering in their support and encouragement. They’ve let me miss important events in their lives with full understanding that it wasn’t because I wanted to. It’s been worth it, every missed event was a step towards my goal and here I am, nearly there. Nearly achieving my goal, seeing it becoming a reality has been the most fulfilling achievement of my life. If you asked me now to do it all again, I absolutely would. This experience has been unique. It has changed me fundamentally as a person and given me a whole new perspective on many aspects of life. It was hard, like I said. I had health ups and downs as well as the delicate balancing act, but I’m here, at the finish line.

This portfolio is a lot of things. It’s evidence of my teaching practice, there will be samples of materials I used for classes, reflections on what I had learnt in my teaching practice placements and will house the reports from the placement visits I had throughout the year. It’s also evidence of a journey of me as an educator and a person. There will be some information about the things that struck me most while working in places other than the teaching placement for the course. It will also describe some aspects of the course which particularly struck a chord with me. So let’s jump into it!

Philosophy of Education