Professional Life

Over the last few months, I have occasionally mentioned my "new" job, but I thought I would expand on what I am actually doing for work and how I got to that point. If you have been reading the blog for a while, you might remember that I struggled A LOT to find work when we arrived in Oz. I applied for numerous teaching roles without even getting interviews, though it turns out now that I realize my applications were incomplete, because here in Australia instead of just sending a cover letter and resume, you are expected to respond to something called "selection criteria", which I did not do! Slowly I started piecing together work here and there in various different roles. During our first 2 years here, I taught the "Sports Trainer" course for Sports Medicine Australia, worked as a Sports Trainer for a local footy team (which I am still doing now), taught a few courses at the Australian College of Sports Therapy, worked as a lab instructor/tutorial teacher for Human Physiology at the university where Erik works, and finally worked as a CRT (causal relief teacher - substitute teacher) for physical education and other subjects at a variety of schools. I was appreciative of the work, but I was yearning for a permanent role so that I could really "settle in" to this country professionally. 

My goal all along was to get a job at the Sports Academy that happens to be very close to where we live. I had done some temporary work there last school year and found that it was the closest thing to my job "at home". To briefly explain, in Australian schools, there are no sport programs like they exist in America. In the States, I worked as a certified athletic trainer, caring for injured athletes at various levels but predominantly high school-aged kids. I also taught Sports Medicine and a few other classes, as I have teaching certification in addition to my athletic training certification. Athletic trainers cannot practice in Australia. The profession does not exist here, and the closest profession to it is Physiotherapy, which I would be required to go back to school for, a 3 year process. No thanks, I'll stick with the 7 years of education that I already have! Anyway, this academy where I wanted to work actually has school-based strength and conditioning and some school-based sport, making it an ideal location for me to use my skills and knowledge!

Professionally, I have always put an emphasis on networking, but having moved abroad and looked for jobs here, I now realize how ridiculously important it is to "know" the right people. I ended up getting an "in" at the Sports Academy thanks to a former UNC soccer player who I worked with about 10 years ago. The High Performance Manager (Head of Strength and Conditioning) at the time put me to work (just based on my soccer player raving about me!) and also made sure that I was the preferred substitute for PE at the school. This was great, but I was still getting thrown in to different classes every day (and often it was not teaching PE, but Italian or Wood Tech or Science). Towards the end of last school year, I applied for a role there (within the Sports Academy, not the school...I will explain in the next paragraph) for the new school year. I was able to convince the Head of Sport to hire me, however, it was only 3 days a week. I had hoped for full time but I took what I could get and tried to make the most of it. I started that role at the end of January, and continued to teach Human Physiology at the uni one day per week, just leaving me with Fridays off (which was not a bad gig, actually!!). Around May, another staff member wanted to drop down in time fraction, so I was offered the chance to go full time and I jumped at the opportunity! Though my contract is over at the end of the school year, I am optimistic that I will be hired for next school year, as I have really fit in well with the current staff and students.

This Sports Academy is unique in Australia. It is essentially a government-funded sports school that has just finished being built this year. It is within a secondary school (years 7-12 in Australia) with a total school population of about 1200 students, 500 of which are within the Sports Academy. Students who are at the school for sport take their classes within the regular school, but then they have special classes in their day called ADP (Athlete Development Program). Years 7/8 have 3- 45 minute periods of ADP per week and Years 9/10 have between 5 and 10 ADP periods per week. Years 11 and 12 are a bit different because they have a tougher academic timetable and they might be coming in before or after school to complete workouts. During ADP, students undertake a physical preparation program where they learn and perform basic lifting techniques, Olympic lifts, and maintenance exercises designed to prevent injury. My role within this Sports Academy is as a Rehabilitation Coordinator, primarily for athletes in grades 7 and 9. Every morning, physiotherapists from a local clinic visit our school for an hour. We schedule 5 minute time slots during that hour, so students who are injured can book in to see the physio, either for a new injury or for a review of an old injury. The physios do not perform treatment or rehabilitation during that time, they only make a diagnosis. After athletes have a diagnosis, they (hopefully) come to see me for rehabilitation exercises, and I progress them as tolerated. In addition, I might have to modify what they are doing in ADP because of their injury. There is also A  LOT of documentation and paperwork involved in the job. We use a computer program to keep track of the injuries, though it is hard for us to track things like time lost due to injury because unfortunately most of the injuries we see actually occur in the sports played outside of school.

The "physio" room"

Hot and cold tubs (or "spas" as they call them here!)

There are advantages and disadvantages of my current role compared to my previous employment as an athletic trainer/teacher in the USA. Here, I don't have to stay until 11pm covering a high school football game, which is obviously an advantage! However, I do miss the acute injury evaluation part of my job, which is why I have remained working for the local footy club on the weekends. Because so many of our students play sport outside of school (since most Australian sport is club-based), we have little control over what they are doing, which can be frustrating. I realize that this can also happen at high schools in the US (and it did happen to me a few times), but more often than not, injuries I was caring for occurred on-site at my school during a practice or game. Ironically, rehab is something that I struggled to do in my US high school athletic training rooms because it was often pushed to the side due to athletes needing to be taped before practice or needing to get to practice at a certain time. I have always believed that rehab is a crucial part (arguably the most important part) of injury management, but I haven't always had the time and/or resources to implement rehabilitation programs like I am able to do in my current role.

It took nearly 2 years for me to settle into ONE job that I love, but it was well worth the wait. Even though I cannot "work" as an athletic trainer, I feel fortunate to be able to use most of my knowledge and experience in my current role. I even get the occasional chance to teach different year levels about things like injury management, which brings back memories of teaching Sports Medicine classes in the US. I always thought (and stated!) that I could do any type of job and be happy, but after months of working at jobs that were only slightly satisfying professionally, I have realized that I have a passion for my work and I NEED to be doing something in my field in order to be happy. After all, going to work every day to a job that you enjoy is not really "work" at all, is it?!