ABSTRACT
When I started teaching my short and long-term aims were simply to survive! I felt I never had time to plan my development, never had time to go on courses, and never had time to read more about my subject. For three years I drifted from term to term, responding to whatever the latest initiatives were but without any sense of ownership of my own growth. When the time came to apply for Head of Department posts I realised I had little more to offer than when I started teaching. True to say I learnt the hard way, ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there’.
