Many years ago whilst still teaching, a professional development activity required us all to undertake an assessment as part of a personal growth program. I can’t remember which assessment it was, but it measured several key areas – a bit of a combination of a psychological and aptitude profile to see if we were mathematically or logically aligned as well our artistic and creative abilities. It also included whether we had strong spiritual beliefs as well as our communication skills. It certainly wasn’t about Emotional Intelligences.

No surprises for me when my assessment came back. If you know me well, then you can probably guess where my strengths and weaknesses showed up. I do remember many of the staff grumbling about having to do “touchy feely” activities as a result of the assessment in order to create a “team spirit”.

Many of the teaching staff flitted about showing and comparing their profiles to each other, but I decided to keep mine close. The facilitators had a good idea of the grouping of various abilities and it was clear that for the most part, we had chosen our teaching areas according to our profiles.

With my result showing somewhat of a deficit in the science area, I made the decision to undertake some studies related to that area for personal growth. I chose to do a course unrelated to my subject matter or even teaching.

I had just finished a 4 year Steiner Teacher Training course and had discovered that I enjoyed exploring subjects that stretched my mind. As Steiner education looks at the whole child including their health, I decided to find out more about Homeopathy.

This might not appear to the skeptic to be scientific, but I discovered that you do need a logical approach to taking a history and recording and comparing symptoms to the effects of remedies. A bit of a giant physiological jigsaw puzzle. This study took another 4 years part time and as part of the course requirements I needed to study anatomy and physiology. Nothing like diving into and improving my scientific knowledge! Another year of stretching myself although I do like to think it was balanced with the esoteric knowledge imparted during the Polarity Therapy that I studied after that…….