AN EX-SOLIHULL teacher is living out her childhood dream by telling children about everything water.
Sharan Gill dreamed of one day becoming a teacher and would set up her toy blackboard, place her teddy pupils in a row on the floor, and then lead them through their ‘lessons’ for the day.
And those childhood dreams came true for Sharan, who went on to teach RE and History at a Solihull secondary after becoming the first woman in her family to attend university.
Then last summer she left her increasingly busy school job after 15 years and began a key educational advisor role within Severn Trent which has seen her back doing what she loves – teaching kids in the classroom.
The married mum-of-one said: “I was one of those people who always knew they wanted to be a teacher. And I did spend 15 years teaching in the same school I trained in and loved it.
“But in teaching you never get to the bottom of your ‘things to do’ list, there is never enough time.”
Sharan is part of Severn Trent’s education team who travelled into primary and secondary schools to spoke with more than 135,000 pupils about everything water, as well as offering crucial careers advice last year.
As part of a Wonderful Water Tour, they provide free assemblies and workshops and make the sessions interactive, informative and most of all fun.
The 39-year-old added: “Like teaching, I still get a buzz from delivering to pupils, especially when you have an engaged audience. I feel like a teacher again then, but I have to tell myself not to tell the children off.
“In Chemistry GSCE, there is a whole section on waste water treatment.
“We play a video about how we treat sewage at our Minworth site and the teachers and pupils love it because it’s a real life example of what happens, rather than from a text book.
“At the same time we use the sessions to deliver our messages about what to flush and what not to flush.
“In workshops we can also make fake poo with Weetabix, give the kids the filtering equipment and say ‘Right then, filter it all out’.
“When I was teaching we had nothing like this, no private companies coming into the schools to help in education like this.”
