As work on high-end television documentaries dried up after COVID, Peter was thrilled to discover that his storytelling talents and passion for history would open a whole new exciting career in teaching.
Name
Peter Oxley
Old Position
Documentary film maker for 30 years working with the BBC and then freelance
New Career
Training to become a secondary school teacher of history
Can you tell us about your current role?
I’m currently training to become a secondary school teacher of history. I’m doing a PGCE at Middlesex University. The course is a mixture of academic assessment and hands on practical experience in secondary schools.
What were you doing previously?
I’ve done quite a few jobs, starting as an actor in my early 20s, which I aborted not long after. For the last 30 years, I’ve worked as a documentary filmmaker, first with the BBC, and then freelance from the early 2000s onwards. I primarily made history, documentary, science, archaeology programmes, that kind of thing. It was a career I loved and felt very proud and lucky to do.
Why were you looking for a change?
30 years is a long time to do any one thing, and if I’m being honest with myself, I was beginning to fall out of love with it. I’ve had such a great time and so many memorable experiences, but I just wasn’t enjoying it to the same extent. I felt that I plateaued. I felt that the work I was being offered wasn’t of the same quality.
That’s to do with the funding crisis in television at the moment, and generally, I just felt I was going through the motions. It was just work for the sake of it, and I promised myself I would never do that.
What gave you the motivation to change?
Specifically, it was that the type of documentaries I used to make, which were quite high end, lots of location filming, they were very expensive. They were just becoming increasingly rare, and work was starting to dry up. Since COVID, all my colleagues and I had all noticed that the work was not as plentiful as it once was.
And it just felt that the writing was on the wall. I know a lot of people in my position in television making who were taking second jobs as taxi drivers, delivery drivers, postmen, to keep the ship afloat. That, and the fact that I just was a bit tired of it all, was my motivation.
What was the inspiration for teaching?
Well, this wasn’t an overnight decision. I had been thinking about a change for a while, and I was scratching my head about what I could possibly do. I just couldn’t see, short of teaching specific filming skills, what I could use my skills to do.
It was my wife, Nina, who got me to think more specifically about teaching. She’s a very successful leader in publishing, but she also trained as a business coach during lockdown, and she was hugely helpful. She made me realise that it wasn’t too late to start a new career – that I had a lot to offer, and that my skills were very transferable.
What skills or experience did you realise you had that were easily transferable?
When we talked about it, I realised that what I had been doing for the last 30 years was taking quite complex material, topics that most of the audience didn’t know much about, and making them understandable, engaging and entertaining. I was repackaging them to make them accessible for an audience.
My wife made me realise that that’s what a history teacher does. We take historical narratives, and tailor them to a lay audience – in this case, children – so my storytelling skills from my TV career were just as applicable and useful in teaching. And I thought, ‘yeah, that’s true’. That was the light bulb moment when I realised that teaching would not only be fulfilling – it would be a continuation of what I’d been doing and it would also extend my shelf life.
What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about making a change?
There is this myth that your age will be held against you. It was a worry for me because I came from an industry where age is a factor. And I think age isn’t always regarded as a valuable thing. But in teaching, I found quite the opposite.
The people I’ve encountered, whether that’s my other PGCE students, my tutors, my mentors at school, or other teachers, have all recognised that this was a big change for me and that I was passionate about the subject and about teaching, because, otherwise, why would I have given up my other career? They welcome the experience that I bring.
What was the best piece of advice or help that you received when making your decision?
I was trying to decide between teaching English, which is what my degree was in, and history, which has always been my passion. And a teacher I spoke to said to go with what you love because that will shine through in your teaching. You may be more qualified to teach something else, but if you don’t show your passion, how will the kids ever feel passionate about subject? It was a great piece of advice.
