Cricket star writes a book on teaching
Scottish cricket legend Paul Hoffmann had a light bulb moment in his cafe in Australia that led to him taking up a teaching career and writing a book about his experiences.
Survival Guide for New Teachers was released earlier this month, independently published and available on Amazon on Kindle and paperback.
Hoffmann, 50, an English teacher at Duncanrig Secondary School in East Kilbride, might spend his working hours in a classroom, but he still keeps up with cricket and is president at Uddingston, having starred there as an all-rounder.
The affable Australian has worked for an internet bank’s fraud department, run his own cafe back in Australia and been head groundsman at Uddingston Cricket Club in his time. He’s also a qualified journalist.
Teaching was quite a departure, therefore, which sparked the idea for the book.
“When lockdown started I had to home-school my boys and had my students as well to work with online,” he said. “I started reminiscing about the last five years, and it just felt quite nice to get it down, the experiences that I’ve had, what I’ve learned and what I could have done differently.
“I thought it would be a blog, but 26,000 words later I thought ‘I may as well get this published’.
“There are lots of new teachers out there who quit within the first few years because it’s too tough for them, it’s a lot more difficult than they realise.
“I went through difficult times as well, because it was a big career change for me, it was definitely out of my comfort zone. I’ve learned a lot along the way and thought why not help others who are in the same position as I was five or six years ago, to try and make that transition a bit easier for them.
“I got it self-published, my wife checked over the spelling for me and that was it. It’s doing all right, but I can’t retire on it just yet!”
Teaching is something that Hoffmann is really enjoying.
He said: “In 2014 I was over in Australia, my wife and I owned a cafe. We used to take on some staff that were in high school, and I’d quite often help them with their English homework.
“My wife suggested teaching, so I applied to go back to university and do a post-graduate, did teacher training and taught for a couple of years there, then came back over here.
“I’ve been teaching since the start of 2017. It really was one of those light bulb moments.”
Hoffmann says his next venture will be a book about cricket, called ‘How to Bowl Faster and Take More Wickets.’