Teaching wasn’t always the plan for MYP Coordinator, Multilingual Coordinator, MYP and DP English Teacher, Kate Sorrell, but it was always there, in the background. After studying law and gaining corporate experience, a realization hit Sorrell—education was the true passion. She reflects on her journey into education sharing how her experiences in both corporate and leadership and teaching roles shaped her passion for learning.
What follows is Kate’s story in her own words:
I grew up in a family of teachers and my parents and my aunt always thought that I would probably become a teacher, but then I decided to make a change when I got to high school, and I thought that I would be interested in law. I’m very glad I did that degree, and I left university to work in a company for a while, and gained some experience in different areas. But then, by the time I was 26, I realized that I still just really wanted to be a teacher and that that was my passion. So then I went back to train as a teacher because it was the thing that I just really wanted to do.
I always really enjoyed working in a team and working with education so even when I was a student I really enjoyed getting involved in all things to do with school. I was what they called in the UK system a ‘prefect’, which meant that as I got to high school I would get involved with kinds of committees and parent-teacher associations, and I think that always just stuck with me. So after being in the corporate world for a while, I realized that I actually just really wanted to work with young people because that was, for me, a lot more rewarding to be able to have some influence, perhaps, on a young person like my teachers have had on me, in my growth. And I felt that was for me just more meaningful. Funny enough, I’m an English teacher, and actually my English and literature teacher, she just made me really feel good about being a learner in her classroom. She was engaging and inspiring and I really loved her lessons; she was interesting, she was very professional, and she just really kind of embodied what a life long learner would be. She was the first person to tell me that of course spelling is really important, but just to give me the courage that it wasn’t only my spelling, it was about what I said as well, and how I said it; and if I lost a few marks in spelling, I could make it up in other areas, so I guess she just really believed in me and that was very powerful.
If you ask the senior leadership team they’ll kind of smile at me because we had a parent session and I stood up and said ‘I just love my job,’ and it’s true, I really do love my job and I think the reason I really enjoy my job is because I get to work with young people and I learn as much from the students that I work with as much as anything. I mean it’s really interesting and I think on a practical level this job is so interesting because every day is different—I’m always moving around in different things, wearing different hats, and I’ll teach a class and then go to a meeting and then talk to parents and then have an awesome leadership meeting with students. It’s never boring.