Hello everyone! Any fellow teachers and movie buffs here?

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I've casually visited this site now and then without a registered profile, but figured that now is the time to register a profile and properly introduce myself. There will be a tl;dr at the end of this post.

I am a Canadian male teacher who is currently living and working in London, UK. I was born and raised on Prince Edward Island. I was diagnosed at a very young age with having mild autism spectrum disorder, though I had no knowledge about this until I happened to observe a medical letter on the kitchen counter one day while coming home from high school. Throughout school, I didn't process spelling and math problems the same as other kids, which often led to me working with EAs (educational assistants) and having some lessons modified. Socially, I was also more awkward than others, though I wouldn't say I became shy and reserved until I hit my adolescent years. Despite my learning difficulties, I was able to overcome my disability and graduated junior and senior high, and even my first degree with honours. Through all of my education to today, though, I still find it difficult to socialize with people unless they start conversations with me. After graduating, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, but I knew I had a deep-vested interest in film, thanks to years of watching James Rolfe (aka the Angry Video Game Nerd) reviewing and talking about movies. One of my first paychecks from working summer jobs was spent on $100 worth of cheap DVDs!

My mother was super-involved in my childhood to the point of being helicopter-ish (understandably so), so after seeing my interest in film, she proposed that I attend a film study degree program. This proved to be a mistake, as though I absolutely love film and want to make my own films someday, my new study program largely consisted of four-hour classes, most of them twice a week, and watching and talking about movies I didn't care about. In other words, we spent all our time chatting, and no time movie-making. Despite being bored to tears from my classes, I met a special someone through my program and we spent a lot of time together for about a year, and was extremely happy being with her. Eventually, I got sick of my film study classes and I started thinking about my past experiences as a student, and decided I wanted to train to be a teacher and inspire students in the same way I was as a kid. Unfortunately, this meant having to split from my best friend and return home to my native province to re-attend a new BEd program, although we still keep in regular touch and visit each other when we can!

Anyway, my BEd year came and went. I became confident in my identify as an individual with autism, and mistakenly began telling more people than I should have about my life story and my wish to inspire students, not knowing that it would be used against me. During one challenging practicum (practice/student teaching period), my coordinator visited the school and asked me to visit her in the school principal's office. My co-teacher and I were surprised, considering we weren't briefed of this meeting beforehand. We meet in the office, and my coordinator explains to me that I am not performing very well in my student teaching, which doesn't surprise me as I genuinely was having a difficult time with the class and wasn't used to teaching a room of 30 students! My coordinator lists off a bunch of reasons explaining why I was not doing well, and she proceeds to reveal my autism as a potential reason as to why I was a bad teacher...in front of my co-teacher and principal! Needless to say, I was very upset that she revealed something so personal in front of people in higher positions of power than myself, and it completely killed my confidence as a teacher.

I had my second practicum at a good IB school in Japan and my third back home at a different school, but was still feeling rotten and untrustworthy of other educators, fearing that they would use my condition against me as well and kick me out of their schools. I also felt that I was being treated unfairly in other ways that were more annoying than hurtful, such as being singled out for not wearing the school jacket on recess duty for the first week, despite literally HALF of the other senior teachers outside not wearing those jackets either. It ultimately took a year of substitute teaching to regain my confidence again, as I felt like I was being treated like an actual human being while subbing, as opposed to a lackey when training as a student teacher.

After graduating in 2016, I applied to jobs all across Canada during the 2016-2017 school year while subbing, and eventually secured a split class job in the most rural part of Alberta imaginable. Think 900 acre farm plots with gravel roads and half a dozen houses peppered throughout each one! I didn't realize how rural it would be until I flew over to visit the area during the summer, before officially moving over the next month after. When I got there, I had dinner with my future principal, and he gave me my class schedule, and I secretly had a heart attack upon reading it. I had to teach 7 different classes to my students, three of which I had absolutely zero training or knowledge in - phys. ed. (gym), music, and Core French to three different grades! Talk about a crazy workload, eh?! I tried to keep up with this workload during the school year, but it proved to be futile. I found it hard to socialize with my co-workers, and was pretty passive about managing my class. I was eventually asked to resign from my first ever full-time teaching gig, which proved to be a huge relief. While I thankfully never told them about my autism, I was baffled that one of the reasons I was being let go was that I had apparently falsified a skill on my resume, which I 100% have never done on ANY job I applied to in my life.

My time in Alberta did prove to be a necessary evil - I learned many adult skills from living over there that my parents never taught me, such as learning the names of car parts, understanding taxes and pension (and how much I hate both of them lol), getting the process of registering a vehicle in my name, and helping maintain a private property. I also got to experience two road trips - one on the move over, and one on the move back, and saw how beautiful of a country Canada was outside of my little island hub! My parents were pretty upset about my failure in Alberta, and they started emailing all these lists of teaching jobs I should consider applying to - I casually dismissed all of them, as most these jobs I wasn't even qualified for and could tell they never even read the job posts in-depth. They would always bring up examples of people they knew who applied to so-and-so, and how they were doing good in their careers. They literally cannot comprehend how hard it is to be a teacher!! ! It's sooo much more than just giving out worksheets and grading papers.

Being jaded from my teaching experiences in Canada, I started watching more movies to escape my parents' passive-aggressive banter, and fell back in love with them all over again. I began collecting DVDs and Blu-rays again and watching movies that I wanted to watch, and developed a particular affinity for Clint Eastwood. After watching The Outlaw Josey Wales, I decided that I needed to make a game plan and move towards becoming a filmmaker. At the same time, I was also aware that I had student loans and other bills to pay, and wouldn't be able to make payments if I just moved out without a job prospect and began making movies. I remembered from teaching job fairs I went to that England was, and still is, experiencing a massive teacher shortage, and found an agency that was willing to pay all of my visa fees, flight fees, and even deposit on my apartment so that I could come over to teach. My parents mocked me for choosing to move over to the UK, saying that it wouldn't work out just like Alberta hadn't, but I didn't budge - I knew what I wanted to do. Eventually, they started seeing things my way and saw it as a good opportunity to make connections in the teaching world - at least, that's the impression I gave them.

Truth be told, I have no desire to move forward as a teacher. I am on a supply contract here, meaning I will just be doing substitute teaching for the next 2 years (due to my visa restriction). I won't ever have to worry about grading, planning, meetings, lectures, or paperwork ever again - my life is my own outside of school. In the meantime, I plan to attend as many film festivals and volunteer on as many sets as I can in order to network and make connections in my true area of interest - film. I hope you all enjoyed my story, and look forward to connecting with other people like me here on the Wrong Planet forums, as well as sharing updates on my life events.

tl;dr Canadian teacher from PEI, overcame a learning disability associated with autism who decided to be a teacher. Trained in a film degree afterwards, but didn't feel right at the time and proceeded to move into education. A series of unfortunate events and general dissatisfaction with working as a teacher have led me to secretly plan an exit out of teaching, and how to enter a career in filmmaking.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Greetings to WrongPlanet as, I could say, that I enjoy films from various genres as, due to the fact, I've often changed my avatar to represent images from a multitude of films.Anyways, I hope you find a great deal of serenity here as well meaningful content and friendships etc.

Welcome IncognitoEgo!

I hope you will enjoy the forum.