Let's talk about transition - YOUR transition!

I have teamed up with a professional photographer (www.dominicharris.co.uk) and I have interest from a publishing house (www.cwpg.com) to help make this work.

I am now looking for volunteers who are happy to talk to me about their transition out of the Forces:

• You might have left a long time ago, settled in a new job - or not;
• You might be in the process of leaving, not knowing how to "sell" yourself;
• You might have an injury or disability and aren't sure how a potential employer will react;
• Your transition might have been successful, but you remember all too well what made you struggle.

Whatever your story is - I would like to hear it. I will try to sum it up in a few key sentences - I know it won't do it justice. But my aim is to get the message across to others.

I want to have your photos taken because people remember pictures better than words.

The collection of stories and faces will then - that's the plan - be sent to HR professionals in organisations which have not yet signed up to the Covenant. With a bit of luck, this could help you directly. But it will also help spread the word about what people like you can contribute and how we can all help Service leavers make the transition.

If you cannot connect with me via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn - then please email me:
sabine.pitcher@mail.com.

Troops to teachers

And why ever not?

An article today in The Guardian / The Observer is sparking a debate on Twitter. (You can read the article here.) Teachers come from all walks of life, so why should this be an issue? According to the article:

Candidates, from the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, wouldn't need a degree and would undertake two years training on the job, with one day a week at university, qualifying them in around half the time it usually takes to become a teacher.

And why ever not?

I regularly have tears in my eyes when I look over the CV of a service leaver - what they have undertaken in terms of training and qualifications could easily fill a page. They have trained, led, planned, worked in teams. None of it - repeat: none - seems worth anything in civvie street. 

Now, if "troops" become teachers, they still have to go through all the same assessments, tests, and exams. They won't automatically become teachers - they have to pass.

So what's the problem?

Nobody says - as suggested by Mr. Northice from the "frontline" (I assume he  means the frontline in the classroom") - that someone who has served is, per se, a good role model for children. That's why they don't automatically qualify as teachers!

But he's more seriously wrong in his assumptions about service personnel. He says that:

the Armed Forces are about using violence, force, aggression and/ or coercion to maintain the dominance of a nationalist narrative within a country's domestic and foreign policy, and the experience of its citizens' cultural life. That is not teaching.    

No, of course it isn't. Nor does it reflect the daily reality of being in HM Armed Forces. Mr. Northice - if that is your name - have you actually ever spoken to somebody who is serving? I  have spend a lot of time over the past two years doing just that; and I can assure you that 99% of the time, aggression, force, violence would get you nowhere and would be sanctioned. Even out in Afghanistan, their aim is to work with the local police and population - not fight them.

The Service personnel I have met were, without exception, friendly, polite, humble, articulate, attentive - and calm. I've never witnessed any of them lose their temper, raise their voice, or insist on being right. 

So - if they pass and make it into teacher training - then they will be extremely good role models, indeed.

Leaving the Forces - feeling lost

Don't get me wrong - many servicemen and women will leave the Military with plans for their future, will know where to go an so so successfully. People have joined and left the Forces for generations. But have these transitions really always been so smooth? Have the problems not maybe always been there - and it's only now that we start talking about them?

What guidance or advice will you have been given? Hopefully, once you have been through resettlement, you will have some answers to questions like

• How do I write a competitive CV?
• How do I prepare for an interview?
• Which jobs should I go for?
• What qualifications will I need?

Based on stories I hear, I assume that not alll the answers you can come up with will be satisfactory. So keep asking!!! I am in touch with service leavers, and some of the things we discuss will eventually find  their way onto this blog.

But there is one aspect for which resettlement will not have prepared you. I suspect that, in many ways, advisers shy away from this, maybe think it is counter productive - some of them will paint  a picture that is too rosy and optimistic.

Let me resort to the words of someone who has been there - because, as you know by now, I haven't. I leave it to you to decide whether this is an exception, or whether some of this rings true for you:

I don’t miss the RAF. I felt nothing handing my kit back and a similar feeling of ‘meh-ness’ handing my ID card over. The job I could take or leave. But just the people. People who share an outlook like you. Who share a way of thinking, and who share the same strange, stupid, macabre, self-depreciating, downright sick sense of humour as you do.

Alex Ford - http://rafairman.wordpress.com/



How do you prepare for that? Maybe you can't - but, then, maybe you can. If the people who provide advice were a little bit more honest - and were more willing to try and understand what this particular transition is about.

The Military has prepared you for combat before you ever went out. There are people who can help prepare you for this challenge as well - people who understand the impact of change, of redundancy, of uncertainty - particularly when it is involuntary. (Alex, if you read this - unlikely as it is - please do let me know how you get on ...) There is no area in civvie street which will feel like life in the Military. But it's not the end of the world, either! Consequently, there is something you will miss. It might take you a while to come to realise it - maybe a clash at work, an argument in a pub.

If you read this before you leave - whoever offers you advice: ask questions! Don't take anything for granted. Don't believe it when anybody says it's going to be easy. But, likewise, there is no need to panic.

The difficulty will be to navigate through the many, many people and organisations who offer advice. Don't let it scare you off - the one thing you cannot afford is to be complacent. You have very little to lose - and a lot to gain. In civvie street, most of our decisions won't have disastrous consequences when things go wrong. So be patient with yourself when some of it feels like failure - that's how we learn and grow.