On a visit to the Royal Air Force Museum in Shropshire, Dominic Whelan finds markers of his past life as an RAF engineer among the Hercules and Harrier jets on display – and proudly points them out to the students accompanying him on a day trip from the automotive department at Sandwell College. “I show them sections of the planes that I riveted,” says Dominic, 48, a further education teacher from the West Midlands. “‘This is where training as a mechanic can take you,’ I tell them. ‘There’s a world of possibility.’”
Further education (FE) encompasses all formal learning for those 16+ that isn’t part of an undergraduate or graduate degree. It’s about inspiring and training the next generation of workers in a wide range of industries such as law, health and social care or engineering. And FE teachers like Dominic use their real world experience to do just that. In fact, Dominic’s skill at drawing on his engineering career to motivate learners was praised by the judges last year at the Pearson National Teaching Awards when he won silver in the FE Lecturer of the Year category.
“I relate to my students as I started out myself as an apprentice car mechanic,” Dominic says. “In the 90s I studied for an engineering qualification from the City and Guilds. My FE teachers were great and combining study with on-the-job experience kept me interested – I remember the excitement when a Porsche came into the garage one day.
“But I’d loved aeroplanes since my first flight, aged nine, so, after four years working with cars, I went to the RAF Careers Office in Liverpool to enrol as a mechanic.
SPREADING HIS WINGS
“Basic training was tough – dawn starts, shoes to polish and toilets to clean – but the camaraderie was wonderful. And the opportunities: I worked on Hercules planes, and flying low level over the Bristol Channel and Cheddar Gorge to check they were running well was amazing – I’d have cleaned every toilet on base for that.”
Then Dominic was put in charge of a small components workshop, training new recruits as they got their first hands-on experience of working with planes. “It was quite daunting for the young ones, walking into this massive multimillion-pound facility. But remembering my own experience of that, I reassured them,” Dominic says. “That was my first experience of sharing my skills with the next generation and I found helping them gain confidence very rewarding.”
So Dominic applied to teach for a fixed term at the RAF’s Defence School of Aeronautical Engineering in Shropshire, alongside gaining his Cert Ed from the University of Wolverhampton in the evenings.
“Standing in front of a classroom, I immediately felt at home. In our opening class as trainees we had to give a presentation on a subject of our choice. I handed everyone a sheet of paper and showed them how to make those origami fortune-telling puzzles that 80s kids like me played with at school. Soon we were all laughing and there was a real buzz in the room. It was exhilarating.”
Deciding his true vocation was teaching, Dominic left the RAF and joined the FE sector. “I thought I was good at fixing planes, but I discovered I was even better at teaching people how to fix planes,” he says. He already had a teaching qualification, but he points out that lack of one needn’t put other engineering professionals off becoming a further education teacher – you don’t need prior teaching experience to get started as you can train on the job.
ONCE A TEACHER…
After a few years of FE teaching, Dominic returned to industry as an engineer for Network Rail, but he soon missed sharing his life experience with the next generation of mechanics and engineers. As a result, he volunteered to help with Network Rail’s training of independent contractors, bringing the skills he’d developed teaching in FE back into industry. But he also missed the flexibility and work-life balance of teaching in FE, with the many opportunities for professionals to teach part-time alongside their career in industry.
Dominic now relishes his job at Sandwell College. As well as teaching in the automotive department for the past eight years, he uses his skills to help out his colleagues in engineering with maths and theory of flying lessons.
He also says his varied career inspires students to realise that the skills they learn in his automotive workshop are transferable to a range of industries. “I tell the students, ‘Planes, trains, automobiles, ships – there’s a whole world out there for engineers.’”
Sure enough, some of his students have followed his example and joined the RAF and Network Rail; others have been galvanised by the theory of mechanics he teaches to study engineering at university; and of course many are now gainfully employed car mechanics. “I had one student who went on to work for a sports car team, prepping cars at Brands Hatch.”
FE teaching gives Dominic huge satisfaction and purpose – feelings he’d love more professionals to experience. “Are you in industry and considering FE? If you’ve ever given a talk to colleagues, that’s it – that’s teaching. You can do it!”
Engineer Dominic Whelan can fix planes, trains and automobiles. Now he’s sharing the skills he’s learnt by teaching in further education
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Nuts and bolts: Dominic loves sharing his skills at the automotive department of Sandwell College
Driving force: when students learn about car engines they pick up transferable skills too, says Dominic
I THOUGHT I WAS GOOD AT FIXING PLANES BUT I DISCOVERED I WAS EVEN BETTER AT TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO FIX PLANES
You don’t need prior teaching experience to share your skills in further education – you can study for your qualifications while on the job. You just need real world experience and a desire to pass on that knowledge to the next generation of workers in your field – whether that’s health and social care, digital and IT, engineering, manufacturing or law. You can even teach part-time or on an ad hoc basis while continuing in your existing career.
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Photography: JUDE EDGINTON
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