Episode Five - The Teacher

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Transcript

0:00:23 - (Nicole): It's time to Bring Your Kid to Work. Hey, everyone. It's time to bring your kid to work. It's the family podcast that explores the world of work through the eyes of parents and their kids. Each week, we interview one parent and their child to chat about what they do for work, what they like, what they don't like and how they've got there in the first place. Let's find out who we're talking to today.

0:00:23 - (Nicole): Our guests today are Lisa and her daughter Molly.

0:00:50 - (Nicole): Lisa Deutrom is a primary school teacher.

0:00:53 - (Lisa): Grade two to be exact.

0:00:54 - (Nicole): And she loves it when the light bulb goes off for the kids that she teaches, you know what I mean? When you finally actually get it and you feel really good about yourself. She became a teacher after trying a few other professions, including some that she'd definitely never go back to. She brings with her her daughter Molly who is heading off to high school next year and has plans to do a couple of different things when she grows up. We had a great chat and I can't wait for you to hear it, too. Let's get on with the show.

0:01:18 - (Nicole): Welcome to bring your kid to work. This episode is called The Primary School Teacher and I have very special guests with me. I say that every week because it's true. I want to introduce a couple of people but I think actually I'll let them introduce themselves. Tell me, what's your name and how old are you?

0:01:34 - (Molly): My name is Molly and I'm twelve.

0:01:36 - (Nicole): Now, Molly, who have you got here with you today?

0:01:39 - (Molly): My mum.

0:01:39 - (Nicole): And your mum's name is?

0:01:41 - (Molly): Lisa.

0:01:41 - (Nicole): Excellent. Thank you very much for that, Molly. Molly, what is your mum's job?

0:01:45 - (Molly): She's a teacher.

0:01:46 - (Nicole): Is she a teacher in a high school? In a primary school. What kind of teacher is she?

0:01:50 - (Molly): Primary school, year two.

0:01:52 - (Nicole): Year two. Now, what does she do all day?

0:01:54 - (Molly): Teaches the kids.

0:01:57 - (Nicole): But what does that involve, do you think?

0:02:01 - (Molly): Just like all the different subjects and helping them?

0:02:05 - (Nicole): Yeah. And lots of kids? Yeah, all those kids I'm sure you've talked to Mum about this. All those kids are exactly the same and they learn in exactly the same way, I'm sure. Is that true?

0:02:16 - (Molly): No.

0:02:19 - (Nicole): Lisa?

0:02:21 - (Lisa): Yes, Nicole?

0:02:22 - (Nicole): You teach grade two?

0:02:23 - (Lisa): I teach grade two.

0:02:25 - (Nicole): And you have how many students in your class?

0:02:28 - (Lisa): So I've got 25 little munchkins in my class.

0:02:31 - (Nicole): Wow. Yeah. And is it true, like I say, that they're all exactly the same.

0:02:36 - (Lisa): All exactly the same. I can teach one way, and they all get it.

0:02:41 - (Nicole): That's not true at all, is it?

0:02:43 - (Lisa): No, they're all little individuals, as we all are, and they learn different ways. They learn at different times. They learn different information. Even when I'm teaching them exactly the same stuff, they take in different things.

0:02:59 - (Nicole): Yeah. Always different. So you have to teach 25 different ways, I'm sure.

0:03:04 - (Lisa): Absolutely. And sometimes I have to teach 50 different ways because you don't always get it the first way, and you have to figure out new ways of getting the information to go in. And also, sometimes as a teacher, you don't get it right. So you've got to figure out right. Okay, well, that didn't work. So what do I have to do? Better or different?

0:03:26 - (Nicole): Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Molly, do you get it right every time when you're at school? You get it the first time every no. What do you love at school?

0:03:35 - (Molly): English. Yeah.

0:03:37 - (Nicole): Is that your favorite subject?

0:03:38 - (Molly): Definitely, yeah.

0:03:39 - (Nicole): What about outside of school? What do you love doing on Mondays?

0:03:43 - (Molly): I do drama. Yeah.

0:03:45 - (Nicole): So, as in theater plays, that kind of stuff? Yeah, I love that. That must be really fun.

0:03:53 - (Molly): It is.

0:03:54 - (Nicole): Yeah. So you're great at English. You love drama. Is this going to lead to a career? What do you think you're going to do when you get big?

0:04:01 - (Molly): I want to be either a lawyer or a marine biologist.

0:04:06 - (Nicole): A lawyer or a marine biologist. Wow. Okay. So why do those things appeal?

0:04:12 - (Molly): I want to be a marine biologist because less of the ocean has been explored than space.

0:04:17 - (Nicole): That is so true. That is absolutely true. So you're interested in exploring more of the ocean? Are you really curious as a person?

0:04:26 - (Molly): Yeah. And I also like sharks.

0:04:29 - (Nicole): Okay, so you're not scared of sharks like I am?

0:04:33 - (Molly): I am, but I'm just interested in them.

0:04:36 - (Nicole): Yeah, you can set the fear aside and be interested in them as an animal, just on their own. That makes sense. And what about being a lawyer? What appeals about that?

0:04:44 - (Molly): I don't know. I just want to be a lawyer. Yeah, maybe.

0:04:47 - (Nicole): I think the drama would help you.

0:04:49 - (Lisa): With that because absolutely.

0:04:50 - (Nicole): A courtroom is often somewhere where you have to well, not perform necessarily, but you have to get up and speak in public and do all those things, so yeah, that could definitely help. And you could do both of them one at a time or part time each. Yeah. It'd take a bit of study, though.

0:05:06 - (Lisa): It would take a lot of you know, you can have so many more than one career.

0:05:11 - (Nicole): So true. Lisa, have you always been a teacher?

0:05:15 - (Lisa): No, I've only been a primary school teacher for six years.

0:05:20 - (Nicole): Six years.

0:05:21 - (Lisa): Six years.

0:05:22 - (Nicole): And so before that, when we're talking about different careers, what did you used to do before that?

0:05:27 - (Lisa): So I've done a few things before I found my way to teaching. When I first left school, I thought I had to go to university because that's just what everyone in my family did, and I thought, Right, so I've got to go to uni. I didn't get the grades that I wanted to study, what I wanted to study.

0:05:46 - (Nicole): And what was that?

0:05:47 - (Lisa): That was psychology. So I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. So I did a year of study, doing a business degree and improved my grades and went to university to do psychology. And I was actually telling Molly this earlier that when I was at school and when I was at university, I didn't quite figure out a way to keep knowledge in my head. So the way that I was taught at school and at university was very read, write, learning.

0:06:21 - (Lisa): You had to be able to hear something, write it down and learn it.

0:06:25 - (Nicole): And spit it back out, and then.

0:06:26 - (Lisa): Spit it back out again. I figured out how to spit it back out, but I didn't figure out how to actually learn anything.

0:06:31 - (Nicole): Wow.

0:06:32 - (Lisa): So I was able to sort of show all this information, show that I knew it when I couldn't actually learn it or keep it. So I sort of kept going with university for a few years, and then I just couldn't do it anymore because, to be honest, I sort of felt like a little bit of a failure because I felt like it just wasn't working. And I saw all these other people who were learning and gaining all this knowledge, and I was just really good at showing the knowledge, but I didn't feel like I was keeping it in my head.

0:07:10 - (Lisa): So I left university and I actually went and worked for the Asian Development Bank on a project with my dad in Tuvalu.

0:07:21 - (Nicole): Wow. Yeah.

0:07:24 - (Lisa): They were doing a sort of development master plan, and I was there as an assistant, and I edited both of the plans that they came up with, and I also ran some community surveys. And then I was actually invited back on another project in the Cook Islands, and I was there for maybe five months, and I developed and ran community surveys, and I also edited the reports as well, so I did that for a few months.

0:07:56 - (Nicole): Did you know all this, Molly? Did you know this all happened before you were no. No. Wow. We're all learning today.

0:08:03 - (Lisa): And then when I came back to Brisbane, because when I had gone to university, I had worked in Know just while I was at uni, so I just thought, Right, well, I'll go back to that.

0:08:14 - (Nicole): What's hospitality.

0:08:15 - (Lisa): I was working in pubs and restaurants.

0:08:18 - (Nicole): Right.

0:08:19 - (Lisa): And I ended up managing Irish pub that I was working at. And I did that for a little while, and then I had an inkling that I might want to get into education, but I wasn't ready to go back to uni because I was still a little bit scared. I was scared that it wouldn't work again, and I didn't want to do something that wasn't going to work again. So I decided to go into early childhood education. And I loved it, absolutely loved it. And I ended up working as an early childhood educator for about, gosh, eight years, working with from babies from 15 months old up to five year olds. And that's where my absolute passion for education just began, because they're little sponges. They are little sponges and they're so clever and they're so capable and they're funny and they're personalities and, you know, toddlers, two year olds.

0:09:27 - (Lisa): So all of that amazing. That's starting to come out. And that's where I just fell in love.

0:09:34 - (Nicole): And that was it.

0:09:35 - (Lisa): And that was it.

0:09:35 - (Nicole): And so you had to be brave.

0:09:37 - (Lisa): So I had to be brave. And when Molly was about two and a half, I still remember sitting on the couch at home with my computer pressing Send on my application, and it probably took me about an hour just to get the guts to press the button.

0:09:57 - (Nicole): So does that mean, Molly, that you had a front row seat to your mum doing all of that university study? Do you remember that because you were little?

0:10:05 - (Molly): Yeah, I can remember.

0:10:06 - (Nicole): Yeah. Did that make you go, you know what I want to do? I want to go to a university, or did that make you feel a little bit scared, too?

0:10:13 - (Molly): Neither.

0:10:14 - (Nicole): Neither. You were just neutral about it? Because I think marine biologists and lawyers probably have to do a bit of study, don't they? Do you know how long that you have to study to be one of those professions?

0:10:26 - (Molly): No. A long time?

0:10:27 - (Nicole): Yeah, I think it is. I don't know exactly either. I was genuinely asking, but yeah, I think it'll be a long time. But you like going to school and you like learning.

0:10:34 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:10:35 - (Nicole): Does it stick in your brain the way your mum said it didn't used to stick in her brain?

0:10:39 - (Molly): Yeah, it sticks in my brain.

0:10:41 - (Nicole): Yeah. It's funny that you talk about that, Lisa, because I feel like things didn't stick in my brain. So yeah, that's really interesting. It's great that it's easier for you to make it stick. What did you do to make it stick, Lisa?

0:10:52 - (Lisa): I realised that there are a number of different ways that people learn, and that was early on, when I did go back to university and do my primary education degree, I realized that I didn't have to learn the way that I was being shown to learn. And I guess that comes with experience as well. And having Molly and watching Molly grow and watching all of my kids grow and the fact that they all learn in different ways.

0:11:22 - (Lisa): And so I started researching how people learn. And I realized that there's actually been a lot of research into this. And people do learn in different ways, and I am what's called a kinesthetic learner. I learn by doing. And so even when I was sort of sitting in university and learning all of this stuff, because I was just hearing it, it wasn't really going in, so I figured out different ways to help the information go in nice. And as soon as I got that, oh, my gosh, I loved it.

0:11:54 - (Lisa): I genuinely now love studying and I would love to go back and do more study.

0:12:02 - (Nicole): Yeah, you love to learn, and I think that's really important thing for a teacher.

0:12:06 - (Lisa): Definitely.

0:12:07 - (Nicole): You're teaching people to learn, so you would hope that you really love it as well. And it sounds to me, Molly, that you were Mum's first real impressive teacher because she learned a lot from you. Kids teach us a lot of things. Absolutely. A lot about ourselves, too.

0:12:23 - (Lisa): And Molly was my first teacher aide as well. Molly's done a lot of laminating and trying out new resources that I was making.

0:12:34 - (Nicole): Yeah, I think a lot of teachers kids end up being chief laminator, chief cutter outer. What do you think your first job might be, Molly? Like, not your out of school job, but if you get a part time job or something, is there anything that you think, yeah, I reckon I'll do.

0:12:50 - (Molly): That while, you know, at school or probably McDonald's.

0:12:55 - (Nicole): Yeah. Yeah. Is that something that someone else in your life may have done?

0:13:01 - (Lisa): Maybe.

0:13:02 - (Nicole): Did your mum work at yeah, yeah, so did yeah. I was going to ask you, what do you think makes a good job.

0:13:08 - (Molly): Molly, something that you actually enjoy doing?

0:13:13 - (Nicole): And what about the environment that you're in? You're talking two very different jobs, like marine biology. In my head, I picture a fair bit of outside and then some laboratory work and then lawyers, a fair bit of inside and doing writing and that kind of thing, and interviewing. What kind of environment do you think is a good environment for you for a job?

0:13:34 - (Molly): Probably more like a lawyer, like inside and writing.

0:13:40 - (Nicole): So maybe in the marine biology space, there's more of a research kind of angle for you where you're doing the lab work or doing the writing of reports and things like that, rather than because I don't know about you, I'm a little bit scared of the ocean.

0:13:56 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:13:56 - (Nicole): Are you? Bit scared of the ocean, too? Really?

0:13:59 - (Molly): Oh, my gosh, I hate it.

0:14:00 - (Nicole): Yeah, isn't that weird? But I like pools because they have a bottom and they have sides and you know where but the ocean is just, like, forever, and like you said, it hasn't been explored as much and.

0:14:11 - (Molly): Stuff could, like, eat you.

0:14:13 - (Nicole): Yes, things could eat you. I don't know if I want to go to work where something can eat me. But then it's important stuff, right, to learn more about our environment and the fish and the animals that live in it.

0:14:25 - (Lisa): And maybe there's, like, a crossover. Maybe there's some sort of, like, marine law.

0:14:31 - (Nicole): Oh, I reckon there would be, yeah.

0:14:32 - (Lisa): I mean, there'd definitely be, like, environmental law that would bring in oceans. But I'm sure that there is some sort of crossover that you could find that would just fit you perfectly.

0:14:43 - (Nicole): I reckon one of our listeners will have an excellent idea on this and they can definitely let us know because we like to give information. Lisa, what do you think makes a good job?

0:14:54 - (Lisa): I think a good job challenges you. It makes you happy and it makes you feel like you're doing something, like you're making a difference. Yeah.

0:15:08 - (Nicole): Do you feel, Molly, when Mum comes home, that those are the things that she gets out of her?

0:15:13 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:15:13 - (Nicole): Yeah. Tell me about what it's like having Mum come home after work.

0:15:18 - (Molly): She talks a lot about the kids in our class.

0:15:20 - (Nicole): Yeah.

0:15:21 - (Molly): And she either says that they were, like, good that day or not good.

0:15:28 - (Nicole): It depends on the wind. Can I tell you, if it's windy, kids go crazy. Do you get to know all of their personalities because Mum tells you all about them?

0:15:36 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:15:38 - (Nicole): And so, clearly, your mum is a teacher and that's not something you want to do. Lisa, what did your parents do? It sounds like your dad was involved in international development kind of things.

0:15:47 - (Lisa): He was. But they actually both started off as teachers.

0:15:51 - (Nicole): Wow.

0:15:51 - (Lisa): And it's funny, because the reason why I didn't even think about going into teaching in the beginning was that my mum said, don't become a teacher.

0:16:03 - (Molly): And.

0:16:03 - (Lisa): So I just didn't even think about it.

0:16:05 - (Nicole): Wow.

0:16:05 - (Lisa): So they both started as teachers in Papua New Guinea.

0:16:08 - (Nicole): High school or primary school?

0:16:10 - (Lisa): Both high school, I think mum was sort of middle school and dad was high school and university as well. And then Mum became a editor and publisher and dad ended up moving into sort of the community development space.

0:16:25 - (Nicole): Wow. There you go. So teaching is in your blood.

0:16:28 - (Lisa): It is.

0:16:29 - (Nicole): Sounds like it. Molly, what are other people that you go to school with interested in doing? Do you guys ever talk about it?

0:16:35 - (Molly): Sometimes. My friend Kishing wants to be an artist, definitely. And her mum's also an artist. My friend Millie wants to be a teacher, but it's just so she can decorate her classroom. And I don't really know about arts.

0:16:48 - (Nicole): Yeah. Is it something that you worry about, like, going into the world of work? Do you stress about that at all or you're just looking forward to it?

0:16:55 - (Molly): Just looking forward to it, yeah.

0:16:57 - (Nicole): And what about being an adult out in the world is most exciting to you?

0:17:03 - (Molly): There's no parents to tell you what to do.

0:17:07 - (Nicole): I must say, I liked that part of it, too. Me too. Unfortunately, there's also no parents to pay your bills. That's a shame. Yeah. But you work that out. It's all good. What haven't I asked you about work or learning or school or uni that you think I should have asked you or something that you might want to tell me about?

0:17:27 - (Molly): I don't know.

0:17:29 - (Nicole): I know it's a hard question because I know that a lot of people say that there's jobs in the future that we don't even know exist yet. And so I think it's really interesting that you're choosing jobs now and thinking about them now and what end up happening will be really interesting to watch. Because Lisa, were you at twelve thinking, I'll be a teacher?

0:17:52 - (Lisa): No. Gosh. I wanted to be a florist and a doctor.

0:17:58 - (Nicole): Okay.

0:17:59 - (Lisa): And I think the doctor, I think, and it probably similar to why I want to be a teacher. It was all about helping people. That's what I wanted to do. And I guess sort of the same with being a florist because I wanted to make pretty things that made people happy.

0:18:14 - (Molly): Help people with their flowers?

0:18:16 - (Lisa): Yeah, help people with their flowers.

0:18:18 - (Nicole): And funnily enough, those two cross over in a way that you don't even think about. All patients tend to get flowers, doctors, flowers, it all connects up together. Do you think you'll be teaching until you retire?

0:18:29 - (Lisa): I will definitely be teaching in some way, shape or form, absolutely. I definitely want to stay in the classroom for quite a while yet, but I could see myself eventually. Where I really want to end up is helping to teach the new teachers. So moving into university, academia, I had.

0:18:56 - (Nicole): Some excellent former teachers who were lecturers teaching me how to teach me too. And I think that is a huge job.

0:19:05 - (Lisa): And it's funny, there's one of my lecturers in particular, I still hear his voice, especially when I'm teaching maths and I'm doing something and I hear Kevin's voice in my head telling me or saying, reminding me about different things.

0:19:21 - (Nicole): Is there something in particular that Kevin said that is ingrained so deeply that.

0:19:26 - (Lisa): You have to always, always start with materials? You cannot expect a kid to understand something if you start abstract. You have to start with materials so.

0:19:40 - (Nicole): Actual, real things that they can touch.

0:19:42 - (Lisa): Real things. And it's funny because I always thought that was just maths, but now I even think about that, like when I'm teaching English, and it's as simple as having a whiteboard that a kid can write on, that they can just rub out. So it's not right there. There are so many different ways that you can teach in that sort of conceptual understanding with materials before they move to the abstract.

0:20:09 - (Nicole): Molly, what do favorite teachers that you've had over the years? And I won't get you to name them just in case we leave someone out and then they feel bad. But what do teachers that you've really enjoyed learning from in the past, what special things do they do or say, know, to make you feel like, I can do this.

0:20:29 - (Molly): Mrs. Kay, my teacher now, does I do. We do. You do? Yeah, she does whatever she's teaching us and shows us how to do it first, and then we do it together, and then we do it by ourselves.

0:20:44 - (Nicole): That's a good way of doing it. So she shows you, and then you all do it together so you feel safe and can do it together. And then you go, okay, well, I'm ready now, I can do it myself. And what other teachers, what special qualities do they have that just make you feel like, I can do know any goofy stories or anything that they do that just make you go, you know what? I've got this.

0:21:06 - (Molly): Miss woods always tells random stories that have happened to her, even if it's, like, in maths or like, it's related to what we're doing, though.

0:21:16 - (Nicole): Yeah. So it connects to her real world and that connects to your brain. Do you think that's like, a technique? Is that a technique, Lisa?

0:21:24 - (Lisa): Absolutely. Although Noah your teacher, she just loves telling stories as well and has some.

0:21:30 - (Nicole): Great stories to tell. Got to have good stories.

0:21:33 - (Lisa): But it's funny what you say about the I do. We do. You do. That's exactly how I teach as well. And it is actually a really amazing way of teaching because it's like you start off as a teacher with sort of this gradual release. So you start off by showing kids what to do, and then you step back a bit and you let them figure out a little bit, but you're still there to guide them, to help them. That's the we do. And then when they've sort of got the strategies that they need, then you step back and you let them have a go themselves.

0:22:11 - (Lisa): And that's the you do.

0:22:12 - (Nicole): Nice. So they're all just sneaky little people who tell each other how to teach us, and we're all just getting it together. Oh, my goodness. So sneaky.

0:22:21 - (Lisa): And we're such great gas baggots, too, aren't we, teachers?

0:22:26 - (Nicole): Now, this podcast is called Bring Your Kid to Work, but it's a little bit hard to bring your kid to a classroom when they're in their own classroom. Is that something you've ever have you ever before you started school, did you get to go to school with Mum or no?

0:22:38 - (Molly): Yeah, I did.

0:22:39 - (Nicole): Was that when you were chief? Laminator?

0:22:41 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:22:42 - (Nicole): What did you think about Mum's classroom? On a scale of zero to ten of all the classrooms that you've been in, Molly, how would you rate Mum's classroom?

0:22:50 - (Molly): It was unorganized and messy, but it was really colorful.

0:22:58 - (Nicole): Yeah. And do you like those kind of classrooms that are colorful? Yeah. I suppose as you get older, you don't need as much colour necessarily, to keep you focused on things perhaps messy and unorganized.

0:23:11 - (Lisa): Lisa look, I like to say organized chaos is my classroom we know where everything is in the class, we know what we need, but it's definitely not a classroom.

0:23:23 - (Nicole): No.

0:23:24 - (Lisa): No.

0:23:24 - (Nicole): Thank goodness for that. You do you Molly, when you leave school and go to university, do you think you're going to be going somewhere close? Do you think you're going to be going away? What do you think about university? If you go to do the things that you were talking about?

0:23:41 - (Molly): Somewhere close.

0:23:42 - (Nicole): Somewhere close, yeah. You want to hang about?

0:23:44 - (Molly): Yes.

0:23:45 - (Nicole): Yeah. I did my university by correspondence, which was literally mailing things back and forth wow. In the mail. Because I'm old, you won't have to do that, which is good, because there's something called email that makes life a little bit easier. Lisa, you studied for a fair while. I did firstly on something that you didn't necessarily want to do or use, and then you did your teaching degree. How long was your teaching degree?

0:24:10 - (Lisa): So my teaching degree was it was actually a four year degree, but it was condensed into three and a half years.

0:24:17 - (Nicole): Oh, so you had to really cram it.

0:24:19 - (Lisa): So we did sort of summer semesters and had to really cram it.

0:24:23 - (Nicole): Yeah.

0:24:23 - (Lisa): And I was working at the same time, and Mumming, too.

0:24:29 - (Nicole): That sounds intense.

0:24:30 - (Lisa): Yeah, I didn't sleep.

0:24:34 - (Nicole): Sleep is for the weak. You can do those things when you're younger. You can. When you say you want to do more studying, what do you think you might do?

0:24:43 - (Lisa): I'd really like to either do my Master's in Education or possibly a PhD. Looking at. I'm really interested in how we learn and how we can use that knowledge to really help our kids in classrooms who maybe, like me, don't learn the way that everyone else learns and sort of using that research to help, maybe even change the way our curriculums are designed and taught in classrooms. Because I think we've still got a long way to go.

0:25:21 - (Nicole): We're always learning, though. Absolutely. And I think we also think we're doing the right thing at one point, and then new learning. New learning. And we go, oh, hang on a second. We probably should try something different. This is your dream job, by the sounds of it.

0:25:35 - (Lisa): This is my dream job.

0:25:37 - (Nicole): What was the worst job you ever had?

0:25:39 - (Lisa): I remember when, gosh, I was quite young and I was actually helping my dad out in his office, and I was reformatting floppy disks, and I had to sit with one floppy disk. Molly's probably going, what's a floppy disk?

0:25:56 - (Nicole): Everybody listening who is under the age of 25 maybe has no idea what I'm talking about.

0:26:04 - (Lisa): So I guess it's like an early USB, but it was like a disk, and I would have to put it into the computer and then press Format, and then press Eject and take it out and then put the new one in. And it was like, I don't know, it felt like thousands of floppy disks, and I was just sitting there staring at a screen, not moving.

0:26:26 - (Nicole): Push in, click, pull out, push in. That click.

0:26:32 - (Lisa): Awful.

0:26:33 - (Nicole): You like things to be a little bit more interesting.

0:26:36 - (Molly): Absolutely.

0:26:36 - (Nicole): Yeah, exactly. And, Molly, when you think about work and being a lawyer or being a marine biologist, how do you think you're going to find out whether they are, in fact, the jobs for you? What will you do to figure out if those are the things you're interested in?

0:26:53 - (Molly): Do you think I'll do my research and see what you'd actually do in them and what they're like.

0:27:04 - (Nicole): So what you're telling me is I need to interview a marine biologist and a lawyer to help you with your research? It's kind of why I wanted to start this, because when I was a kid, I didn't know what people actually did, you know, what their job says, but you don't know what it really means on a day to day basis. And you go to work every day, so you kind of want to know if you like it. I had a friend of mine who did a teaching degree, and it was back in the day before they put you in a classroom in year one, and so he did a teaching degree, got to year or got into a classroom and went, I don't like this. You don't know necessarily whether you're going to like that job unless you do a little bit more investigation.

0:27:37 - (Lisa): And I think also, I mean, I can't talk for you, Molly, but I know when I was younger, I sort of had this idea that you had to figure out what you wanted to do and then you just had to go and do that job. But it's not true. It's not the case. You can have two or three or four or ten different careers in your lifetime. You can try out different jobs. You never, ever stop being able to learn or change what you want to do.

0:28:03 - (Nicole): Yeah. Do you feel like that, Molly, that you have to choose and then be stuck with that thing?

0:28:07 - (Molly): No.

0:28:08 - (Nicole): Good. I'm glad to hear it.

0:28:10 - (Lisa): Me, too.

0:28:11 - (Nicole): Yeah. I think that's the important thing is that you can try different things as well. You can learn new things and try new things. Your mum's a great example of that. Yeah. Lisa, is there anything I didn't ask you about work or learning or careers or advice that you want to give to families listening?

0:28:27 - (Lisa): I guess the advice that I would give, especially to parents who are seeing their kids in school and maybe worrying about them not doing as well as others, or is that everybody learns and becomes a superstar in their own time and in their own way. And I have 25 little superstars in my class.

0:28:50 - (Nicole): Yeah, I love that. What's that thing? If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a. Tree. They're all going to be failures.

0:28:56 - (Lisa): Absolutely.

0:28:56 - (Nicole): Yeah. What's? Molly a superstar at Mum Brag time.

0:28:59 - (Lisa): Molly is a superstar at being creative and thinking outside of the box, even in like in her writing and everything she does. And she also has the most amazing memory, which sometimes comes back and bites me in the bottom.

0:29:16 - (Nicole): I remember where you hid that chocolate.

0:29:18 - (Lisa): Mom, do you remember two years ago when you said that I could do this when I was eleven? No.

0:29:27 - (Nicole): Is that true, Molly?

0:29:29 - (Molly): Yeah.

0:29:30 - (Nicole): Good memory. It's very important for a kid, I think, to be able to catch their parents out.

0:29:35 - (Lisa): Absolutely.

0:29:37 - (Nicole): I am going to wrap it up there. I wanted to say thank you so much, both of you. It's been really fantastic talking to you both. Thank you so much for letting me interview you.

0:29:46 - (Lisa): You are so welcome. And thank you for interviewing us. This has been so fun.

0:29:50 - (Nicole): Thank you, Molly.

0:29:50 - (Molly): You're welcome.

0:29:51 - (Nicole): Thanks, Lisa.

0:29:52 - (Lisa): No problem.

0:29:53 - (Nicole): Bye. Here's what we have to look forward to next week. Erin, what does your mum do for a job?

0:30:04 - (Erin): She analyses data trends, I think. Basically a bad psychic, but yeah.

0:30:08 - (Nicole): What other jobs did you do then?

0:30:10 - (Lucy):I worked in a neuropathology lab where my job was to go down to the morgue and get people's brains after they'd died and then cut them on a deli slicer. And then the pathologist would come in and look for things like multiple sclerosis or stroke.

0:30:28 - (Nicole):So you, as a uni student, were able to use a deli slicer to give families answers? Me, when I was at high school, was able to use a deli slicer at my mum and dad's butcher shop to give people ham.

You don't want to miss it. Bring your Kid to Work is a Lioness Media production. This episode was produced and edited by me, Nicole Lessio. Our music is composed by Rakkuo, with graphics and design from Anastasia Makhuka. Subscribe to Bring your Kid to Work, wherever you're listening right now to hear all our episodes, and you can also share with your friends. We hope they enjoy listening too. You can follow us on Instagram at BringYourKidToWork, and on Facebook at BringYourKidToWork, the podcast, and you can follow me on TikTok, Nicole Lessio. Visit www.BringYourKidToWork.com to see bonus content, transcripts from our episodes and to sign up to our newsletter for the latest updates. Thanks for listening.