Teacher Chris on a learning curve

WHEN REDUNDANCY struck, a door may have closed for Chris McCawley but a window opened for both her and a South African township school.

The business studies teacher used the life-changing event to realise a dream she had held for many years to volunteer her skills to those in need.

And in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti she is preparing to do the same in less than a month.

Within days of seeing the tragedy unfold on the impoverished island she was preparing to do her bit.

Next month the 55-year-old is set to go to Haiti with the Global Volunteer Network (GVN), which has links with non-governmental organisations including the United Nations. She hopes to use her teaching experience to bring some much-needed light to the stricken Haitian youngsters, but is willing to do anything to help.

“Unicef have just opened up a ‘tent school’ because the schools in Haiti have closed until September. A lot of the schools were hit and the buildings aren’t safe,” she said. But we can help to make life more normal for the children, it’s being productive.”

Ethical practices and voluntary work have long been important to Mrs McCawley, and something she strove to inform her students about during business studies lessons.

“At Stoke on Trent College I organised for students to do community work at Christmas, to help out with things like St Mark’s Shelter in Shelton or Oxfam shops. They chose an area that interested them and did a few hours’ voluntary work to support it. It also showed them how charitable organisations operated as a business.”

London-born Mrs McCawley said she always wanted to enter the profession.

“I tried thinking about other things, but always came back to it,” she said.

“I always think it must be awful for people who don’t know what they want to do. Even when my children were small I did supply teaching and ran the play group.”

Her teaching career started in Stockport College, where she did supply teaching.

“I trained as a history teacher, but there were lots of history teachers around at the time and they needed someone to take business studies which I did when I was 23 or 24,” she said.

“Business studies is a very dynamic subject. The way it is taught is far more practical now because of the way it has developed.

“There is a lot more involvement of local businesses, which is much better than when I first started, when it tended to be an outline of what businesses were and finance. Nowadays you look at economy, human resources and specific interests.”

She moved to Barlaston 23 years ago, when her husband Greg went to work for GEC. They had met at college when she was studying A levels and he now works as an IT technician at Staffordshire University.

Mrs McCawley taught for 20 years at Stoke on Trent College, before moving to Fair Oak Business and Enterprise College in Rugeley. She loved teaching both the older students at Stoke and the secondary school pupils at Fair Oak, and gave them opportunities to see business at work both at home and abroad, through trips to commerce sites in countries including Canada, Greece, Brussels and Italy and through setting up their own businesses as part of the long-running Young Enterprise scheme.

But in 2009, just two years after joining Fair Oak, a reorganisation of roles meant she faced redundancy.

She was offered early retirement because of her age.

“It was very frustrating and worrying as to how the rest of my career would shape out,” she said.

“I was at a difficult age to start thinking ‘do you want to continue in the profession or do you want to look for a different career’ - would anyone want to employ me? “I saw other people returning to school in September for the new term and not me but it was more of a shock breaking up in the summer and knowing I wasn’t going back.”

She had always wanted to help with a voluntary project and her family encouraged her to follow her dream.

With their support and her redundancy money she found herself heading to South Africa in November with Global Vision International on a onemonth placement in a deprived township.

“I had taken a group from Fair Oak to South Africa and the people there are wonderful,” she said. Cape Town itself is vibrant but the contrasts between rich and poor are a huge shock when you first see it.

“I taught the children from the Imazamo Yethu township, where you can see people in shacks, but it is next door to some really expensive housing.

Your first reaction is: ‘How can people live like this side-by-side?’ but BY KERRY ASHDOWN once you get to know these people you find out a lot in wealthy areas are working to support those in townships.

“I was based at the Sentinel Intermediate School at Hout Bay and I taught whatever they needed teaching. The people were so welcoming and so appreciative of anything you can do.

“For example they were doing maths and English, like our Sat tests, and I offered to analyse the previous month’s test. I used a technique we would use here all the time as a different approach and it really helped them to focus on work areas they had previously got wrong. In things like that I could make a difference.

“Another time I saw children blocking off a draught in a window with a hardback book - that had a big impact on me. And a lot of the children go to school because they get a meal they wouldn’t be getting otherwise.”

Mrs McCawley also enjoyed helping other volunteers to paint murals to brighten the township’s walls, and away from the classroom she took on other opportunities to abseil down Table Mountain and meet baby cheetahs.

Back in Britain she is still volunteering with GVI this time as an “ambassador” for the organisation, visiting schools, colleges and universities to talk about the opportunities for others to make a positive difference to overseas communities too.

She is also raising funds for next month’s volunteering mission and anyone who can help her help the children of Haiti should email her at chrismccawley@hotmail.co.uk