How successfully running English departments equipped me for marketing
After cognitive behaviour therapy and trauma counselling in 2013, I started climbing out of depression and anxiety with a particular phrase ringing in my ears “See the bigger picture”.
At that time, riddled with mental health issues and alcohol dependency, I couldn’t see it.
All I could see was a series of pernicious events that led to a long career in teaching ending. The bigger picture though has emerged since with full recovery and I can honestly say that 27 years of teaching English and leading it from 1996 to career end served me well for this new preferred role and lifestyle.
I think, looking back, I was one of those heads of department who always put others first. I didn’t hog top sets like many HODs did and do. I’d take on challenging classes and if any of my team wanted to offload pupils who were causing issues, my door was always open.
That attitude has stood me in good stead for this business where my department are my clients and though some would never get past interview stage in schools I worked at, I generally am perceived as supportive with this business. Okay there’s 3 negative reviews, but, in true bigger picture style, there’s 124 positive ones. Which isn’t a bad % to be honest.
Being in charge of English too meant I was leading on design – not web design but curriculum design – and I decided (in collegiate fashion) what direction the department would take, what would be taught and by whom. I got high results too in every school I worked in with my team, having often taken on challenges where the English department was the ugly duckling of the school. I turned it into a swan, until the dying swan enveloped my own career and health 8 years ago.
I was skilled too at selling. I wasn’t selling a product, a service, like I do now, but I was selling a love for English and English Literature by being a fun teacher and a human leader.
Now I look back, not with anger and bitterness so much, but with gratitude as I’m pretty certain that without the satisfaction of 27 years of teaching, and the ensuing breakdown, I wouldn’t have replicated that success in education with Get Pro Copy.
English teaching and pernicious people ended up breaking me, but, the bigger picture really shows that 27 years was time well spent in setting me up for the joy that I feel daily in this web design, copywriting and social media business.
