I grew up in Falmouth and spent most of my childhood on the beach or in the sea! I worked for the RNLI for nine years as a beach lifeguard and always knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. I left school to take a level 3 in marine biology and ecology at Falmouth Marine School, before studying marine biology at Plymouth University. I started working here in March 2019 as a marine science technician, running the lab and all the field and practical work, after being senior science technician at Truro and Penrith College. I then dabbled in teaching here and there, particularly during our field weeks when we did a lot of practical work, and I thought I’d like to focus more on teaching. I became a full-time lecturer last September when I started a part-time, two-year PGCE. I’d previously taken an Award in Education and Training (AET) course that introduced me to teaching while working as a technician.
I didn’t plan an FE career yet I’ve really enjoyed teaching this year, particularly as FE is a key area in students’ lives - it takes up two crucial education years for so many long people and can either push them into a subject they love or out of education altogether. It’s really up to us to inspire them to go on to university or HE level or enter industry.
As programme manager I’m responsible for an entire programme ranging from programme development to delivery to ensuring the students achieve all their qualifications. Besides lecturing full-time I have to ensure the programme runs well by overseeing attendance, achievements, pass rates, doing admin and so on. And every year now more students are coming to us with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia; this has increased workload for lecturers and programme managers, as we have to ensure all students get the right kind of support to achieve their best - schools often don’t have the time or money to give the right level of support to pupils before they arrive at college.
I teach around 90-100 students each week across six one-year programmes (they follow two one-year programmes back-to-back in a two-year course). The programmes include a level 2 marine conservation course for students without GCSEs so they can study take resits alongside doing their main course; and level 3s in marine conservation (requiring a minimum grade 4 maths at GCSE) and in marine biology and ecology (minimum grade 4 in English and maths GCSEs) - I’m in charge of the first year in marine biology and ecology. In addition, the marine school runs a foundation degree in marine science and I teach on that as well.
I get into college at 8am, check emails and do admin before our daily 8.30am staff meeting to round up the day’s plans and discuss any queries. Lectures start around 9.30am. I give two or three two-hour lectures a day, sometimes including tutorials and one-on-one sessions, and finish at 5pm. Particularly during my first year of full-time teaching, I’ve done quite lot of preparation work in my own time to stay on top of workload, particularly from September to March. I teach 10 units of 30 lectures each, all of which I have written from scratch from last September onwards after getting ny full-time job in August. One of my colleagues has a teaching, learning and assessment role and has been invaluable in supporting me in my marking, schemes of work and keeping on top of admin. I believe my workload will drop considerably next academic year when I’ve fully embedded these units in the syllabus and I can reuse my written materials.
We’re responsible for supporting level 2 students passing their GCSEs, although we don’t teach those courses - five out of our six level 2 students passed their GCSEs. I love doing projects with students which encourage independent and critical thinking to help them design, create and do their own marine science projects, such as going through topics like statistical analysis and data presentation. In fact, seeing them devise really great projects is a definite highlight and we focus on these from September to March. For instance, one (level 3) student studied the diversity of flora and fauna found at 1m, 5m and15m distances from a stream; another (HE) student measured aggression in crabs by tapping the top of their shell with a pen and finding that those who’d lost one claw compensated by being more angry than their two-clawed peers!
In general, we spend considerable time outside. Most units I run include 3-5 field trips each; we also hold two week-long field courses each year, collecting and analysing data - there’s an intertidal week in October, and then in March/April a ‘pelagic’ (open water) week spent out on boats taking plankton samples, and doing dolphin, whale and bird surveys.
Most come to us because they like dolphins and whales! People don’t know a lot about marine biology until they start studying plankton and worms in the mud. They generally enjoy studying larger things like mammals, sharks, wrays, birds and so on rather than systems and processes and the mathematical side. Oceanography and how the sea moves and works is also popular.
I’m just planning a new module called aquatic eco-systems, which basically discusses the ecology of different marine systems, such as the ocean bottom and pelagic areas and how all these systems work in areas such as estuaries and coastal zones. Most of my work focuses on coastal systems. I study seabirds a lot outside college work and am allowed to take five or six days of time out doing my own research in the summer, in cooperation with local industry. Falmouth Marine School and Cornwall College, which is branded as a ‘career college’, are keen for lecturers to maintain strong working relationships with industry to help with placements and apprenticeships that students will potentially need when they finish their courses.
Apart from managing workload, it’s about ensuring students do well in their qualifications and they achieve a 95% pass rate plus a 99% attendance rate and a 95% retention rate. It’s keeping your students enthralled by the subject while also seeing them understand and stay on top of their coursework, all of which I really enjoy doing. The biggest challenge is keeping up a constant drive towards high-end achievement.
All my students passed their main qualification and almost all level 2 students passed their GCSE resits. I also love seeing the students enjoying the course which, for me, is the most important thing.
The ability to manage your time is essential - I had to get very good very quickly at learning how to do things in the correct order and prioritise workload. You have to be passionate about your subject, particularly in marine science which is quite a niche area. And you need to be a team player - I couldn’t do this job without the great team around me.
A degree in a relevant subject such as marine science, marine biology or marine ecology, a teaching qualification (really helpful) plus maybe a postgraduate degree - having a masters gives you a specialism and an edge in where you want to go in teaching.
Take your time, which is funny considering you don’t have a lot of it. Ensure things are done properly and well. Take sufficient down-time for yourself - that’s important. You need to encourage those you work with to let you have some personal research time and days out in industry as that is what keeps people really interested in their subject and maybe enthuse them to go on to do a part-time masters. Lastly, enjoy your teaching and time with your students.
Are you happy to be quite independent? I’ve learnt a lot about my job on my own.
Love of my subject and getting to teach really cool things that deeply interest me. And, of course, having such great students!
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