The Ladder

Supporting students towards successful futures and confident career choices

Andrew 'Bernie' Bernard, Andrew Bernard

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781781353745
• eBook ISBN: 9781781353837
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Counseling in Career Development

Foreword by Colonel Dame Kelly Holmes. Regardless of one's plans for the future, many people's careers are founded on a series of chance encounters, experiences and serendipity. School, college, university, jobs, family, sports, hobbies, friends, relationships - these are all fertile grounds for career-related conversations and explorations.What if we teachers, guides, mentors, parents and peers started to notice these seemingly unconnected happenings and, indeed, started to engineer and encourage them to happen? Using the mantra 'every adult is a careers teacher', The Ladder will inspire teachers to explicitly link their subject area to students' futures, both in school and outside its walls, and support them in doing so. Bernie draws upon his 30-year career in education and business development to bring clarity, focus and ideas to educators as to how they can best start students on their own ladders to success. Ultimately, in writing this book, Bernie's aim is to bring young people's futures to life with some personal skills reflection and forward planning designed to help them as they embark on their fulfilling futures - regardless of their upbringing, academic achievements or ethnic background.

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Chapter 1

YOU ARE HERE

The longer I live, the more convinced I become that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.

Charles R. Swindoll1

How did you get to where you are today?

Did you have a clear plan for your schooling, work, career, family and relationships?

Did everything go to plan?

Did life take a few turns you weren’t expecting?

Perhaps there were a couple of ‘random occurrences’ you couldn’t have planned?

Did you do it all on your own?

I’m willing to bet that your life has been defined by a series of decisions (some more considered than others), a few periods of comfort, a couple of sparks of pure chance and some drifting, as well as some support from others when you needed it, even if that was unsolicited because you didn’t realise you needed it. Sound familiar?

This book is an exploration of the positive effects of random occurrences and how they can shape and change the direction of our lives. More importantly, it’s an exploration of how we can use our positions and experiences to create more, seemingly random, such occurrences to support young people as they explore and progress their education, careers and lives.

6My journey

Officially my name is Andrew David Bernard, but to be honest I don’t really like the name Andrew. At school, where all my friends had a nickname, I was called Bernie. Seeing as everyone who knows me calls me this, and I reckon it suits me, I call myself Bernie. Hello.

I was brought up in Buckinghamshire, England, where I lived with my dad, David, mum, Jean, and sister, Sarah Jane. I went to a grammar school where I was one of only two boys from my primary school to get a place. (My parents moved to a new house to be in the catchment area.) They said I was ‘lucky’; however, it didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t particularly happy there – especially as all my close friends had gone to the secondary modern nearby. I grinned (mostly) and bore it.

During my early teens I was becoming an accomplished cyclist, winning the chance to compete in a national competition. I did not, however, end up riding in the nationals, because my bike was stolen. Well, that’s the reason I gave to anyone who asked; on reflection, I think I was looking for an excuse not to be humiliated on the national stage, so used this one. It has always been a huge regret.

Alongside my sporting endeavours, my O-level (as they were in those days) results were OK – 9 in total, all Bs and Cs – but then at 16 there was another choice: sixth form, college or work? By this point I’d made some good friends at school and they were pretty much all going to the local college to study A levels. Me? Well, my parents decided that I would ‘do better’ if I stayed at the grammar to do mine. As you can imagine, this wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but there was no winning mum and dad round to my way of thinking. Unfortunately, like many teenagers who don’t get their way, I decided that life was not fair and embarked on a full-blown two-year tantrum fuelled by machismo, anger, testosterone and entitlement.

It did not go well and after two years of coasting, arguing, showing off2 and generally being angry, results day arrived. Many of my schoolmates were jumping around shouting happily about how they’d got into Oxford, Cambridge, Durham or LSE. I slunk off home with the unopened envelope containing the results for the two A levels I had completed. When I opened it, after a minute of disbelief, I experienced 7the first genuine emotion I’d felt for years, maybe ever. I started bawling my eyes out as I realised that I’d wasted the past two years, with only an E in sociology and a U in business studies to my name. Well, despite thinking I knew it all, I honestly had no idea what to do.

In the end, I did something I’d not done for years – I asked for help. Specifically, I asked my mum for help in trying to find a course that would take me – I didn’t care where or doing what, I just needed to break the toxic chains I’d wrapped myself in, go away and grow up. Despite my U grade in business studies, I decided that a course in business, or business and finance, would be a good one for me as a broad-brush approach to future career options. I couldn’t face exploring other subjects at this low point, and business was something I already knew a little bit about.

There were two BTEC Higher National Diploma (HND) business studies courses on offer that I could apply for: at Huddersfield Polytechnic and North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (NEWI). I was offered an interview for both, but the one at NEWI happened to be first. When the letter arrived offering me a place I said, ‘That’ll do.’

‘That’ll do’ is not what you usually (or, indeed, should) say when you’re deciding on the next steps of your education or career, but I’d left myself with very little choice. Still, I never even went to Huddersfield for the interview. Fast-forward 20 years and, after leaving north Wales with a distinction in business and finance and a career path which was anything but logical, I was living in Lancashire, married and with a young family. I had a single thought as I left work at Lancaster University one winter’s day: the doors slid open and the cold air hit me in the face and I thought, ‘That’s the best part of my day.’ That’s when I realised that I was very unhappy with the work I had been doing. My role in business development was an extremely important part of the university, but it wasn’t something that made my heart sing. In fact, it made me stressed, anxious and unhappy.

At 38 I had my first serious thoughts about what I wanted to do … 20 years after leaving school. My doctor signed me off work due to stress and my wife Val (a counsellor and therapist) got to work. We used the Wheel of Life (which we’ll learn all about on page 40) and instantly saw what was wrong – it was work and career plans and how they impacted on my happiness and feelings of usefulness. She asked me when I was last truly happy. Bear in mind Val’s my wife so I needed to think carefully. I took a full 10 minutes to sheepishly (and honestly) reply with: ‘On that ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Foreword by Colonel Dame Kelly Holmes
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Glossary
• Note for teachers, mentors and advisors
• Chapter 1: You are here
• Chapter 2: The continuum for the acquisition of skills and knowledge (CASK)
• Chapter 3: Equality of careers opportunities: the research
• Chapter 4: Applying the Gatsby Benchmarks
• Chapter 5: Teaching tools
• Chapter 6: Challenging stereotypes: support for under-representation in STEM careers
• Chapter 7: Resources, programmes, support and links
• Chapter 8: Supporting students with special educational needs and disabilities with their career aspirations
• Chapter 9: Businesses: the how and why of involvement in education
• Chapter 10: Careers questions
• Chapter 11: Over to you
• Appendix: getting involved
• References
• About the author
• Copyright