CHALK HIS NEW CAREER UP TO MORE TIME WITH HIS KIDS
DARREN JONES
Corporate executive to schoolteacher
“Some men buy Harley-Davidsons, but I went to Griffith University – no man buns though.”
That’s how high school teacher Darren Jones explains his midlife career change from corporate high flyer to educator.
Darren, 48, graduated from his Townsville high school with the highest possible tertiary entrance score but, back in the day, didn’t really receive any career guidance. He enrolled in the relatively new course of computer science at James Cook University and learned computer programming.
“I was working my way up the technical ranks when I suppose someone recognised that I was quite good at talking to people so they stuck me in a business suit and had me dealing with clients,” he says.
He met his English doctor wife, Lorraine, in Australia and they returned to live in London where Darren worked for BT, a multinational telecommunications company. His role was co-ordinating systems for the pharmaceutical industry and he travelled extensively to Europe and the US, courted clients and politicians and worked crazy hours.
“It was a big gig,” he says. “It was financially rewarding but I suppose I had a yearning to have a house with a driveway and a better lifestyle.”
Darren had stints working for telecommunications companies but, by then, his two daughters had come along and he realised he was missing out on seeing them grow up.
“I suppose I was in a position where I could do something about it,” Darren says.
“Teaching came to me because my older brother is a schoolteacher at a Catholic college in Melbourne. He’d say to me he genuinely loved going to work every day and that always stuck with me.”
He took the plunge at 42, leaving work and enrolling in a Diploma of Education.
He’s now teaching maths and computing in the private system and says the good news is he loves teaching.
“You certainly don’t do teaching for the social status or the money,” Darren says. “But when you get feedback from kids or parents that you’re doing a good job, when they say thank you, that’s pretty rewarding.
“No one ever said thank you very much in big business.”