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Bill’s Learn4Life Biography

Okay, so where do you start after 50 trips around the sun and having eaten more school dinners than even Jamie Oliver’s cooked?
Well, the usual place is at the beginning, so here I go...
30th January 1961, William Thomas Callaghan, was born to his proud parents, Agnes & Cyril at St. Mary’s Hospital, Manchester. I must have been the idyllic first child, as no brothers or sisters followed!

We lived in a brand new semi in Denton, and I remember my shiny garden swing fondly. My first day at school was very traumatic, I had a bench dropped on my toe and I just remember screaming the assembly hall down staring at a picture of Sir Francis Chichester through tear filled eyes!

Dad’s job took us to Leicestershire when I was 10 and my best friend was Kevin Reed, who went on to play football with Gary Lineker at Leicester City. Everyone knows where Gary is now and my mate Kev, well he’s happily self employed with grown up kids just like I aim to be with my new business; but more of that later...

I managed to get a full set of ‘O’ levels and was aiming to be a dentist when in 6th form but disaster struck and my dad died suddenly a few weeks before taking my ‘A’ levels. His untimely death was life changing and I took a completely different route by going to Exeter University to train as a teacher.
It was there that I met my wonderful wife Sue, who also chose Exeter by that glorious word we can all relate to, ‘fate’. We enjoyed 3 years as students together before I graduated in 1983 and secured my first teaching job at ‘Lupton House’ in Churston Ferrers on the edge of Brixham. It was a real challenge to the start of my career as I was teaching boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties from 9 to 16 years of age. This experience ultimately proved to be the very best way to understand how to teach, when the learners spent most of their time and energy in trying to be ‘unteachable’! Some of these ‘boys’ keep in touch with me today, and they’re now in their 40’s!

In 1988 I left Lupton for Torre Primary School, where I worked for an amazing Headteacher and Deputy, who moulded me into the creative teacher I believe I have been since working with primary aged children from 4 to 11 years of age. 1992 was a very special year as I achieved my first senior promotion at White Rock Primary, and my son Joshua was born. Meghan followed two and a half years later, together with another promotion to Deputy Head at Foxhole Infants.

Three challenging years later, I decided that my family needed me more than I wanted to climb further up the rungs of the career ladder. I took a leap of faith and returned to teaching older children at Marldon Primary for a year. I’ve since worked in several Torbay schools and for the last ten I’ve been at Chestnut, formerly Higher Brixham, Primary.

Sadly, due to falling numbers of children in the Brixham area, the Mayor has just made the difficult decision to close the school and relocate the children, a process which will take from now until July.

I have taken an equally difficult, but ultimately very exciting decision, to leave Chestnut now and embark upon a journey into the unknown, that of self employment and house husbandry!

Fortunately my wife Sue is still going to continue teaching at St. Margaret Clitherow Primary in Brixham and my own children are now 19 and 16; so managing a more domestic role does not actually send me into a mad panic or dreaded fear (apart from the ironing). However, I’m promised a course of Continued Professional Development in how and when to crease or not to crease, a question to behold indeed!

So there you have it really, my life to date in a nutshell. I now offer myself as a Personal Tutor and Life Skills Coach with a brand new company, LEARN4LIFE LIMITED. I hope you will take the time to view my website, www.learn4lifeltd.com, and if you or anyone you know need the services of a very experienced and well thought of personable professional, then please do get in touch, and maybe join me as we all take our next trips around the sun. Speaking of which I do believe she’s out shining brightly, and as we do enjoy each other’s company, I really should end and join her now....

View my website http://www.learn4lifeltd.co/