Before LWTT

Gail Johnston was born and brought up in Greenhill, Bonnybridge and left school at the age of 16 with only a few O’ levels and not any hope of taking on any further education in the future.  On leaving school Gail started as a one year YTS Clerical Assistant, working for an export company in Denny.  After this she secured employment with Greenhill Community Resource Centre as an Administrative Assistant. The Resource Centre was a community based project managed by local people and it provided a range of services from adult literacy classes to junior and senior youth clubs.

At the age of 17, Gail became involved as a part time youth worker in the evenings and took part in relevant short courses and training.  During this period the project went through a variety of changes both in management committee members and community development workers.  Gail always remembers thinking that they would love to undertake the development work within the Resource Centre but she had neither the confidence nor the belief in herself to do it.  Gail was also always put off by the fact that she would have to go to University to do the degree to enable her to become a professional Community Education worker.

Over a period of time, Gail gradually started to pick up on the development work for the Centre simply because there was no-one else around to do it due to the funding and recruitment problems it faced.  Eventually she was offered the Acting Co-ordinator’s post in 1998 to try and regenerate the Resource Centre as over the years the programme had gradually fallen away. Over the coming months, the Centre became full to capacity as Gail developed youth clubs, adult learning classes and play-schemes. Being a local resident herself she was instrumental in recruiting new members onto the management committee and providing them with support.

Gail says of this experience,’ I really enjoyed this work as it gave me a sense of fulfilment and challenge - this was a new role for me’. 

Learning and Training at LWTT

During this time Gail was approached by the local development workers who were supporting the project and advised that there may be an opportunity to obtain a work based degree through LWTT.  At the time Gail was not at all sure about this as she had left school with very few qualifications a long time previously and her experience of education at secondary school had left her feeling that she wouldn’t be capable of reaching a degree level standard.  Gail’s confidence had also been seriously dented by a recently, marriage break up which meant that she had become a single parent of two young girls.  Despite all of this, Gail decided that it was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to miss and therefore applied for a place on the LWTT programme.

Gail feels that the experience of being on the programme was ‘a challenging and fulfilling role for me both personally and professionally.  I started to see the bigger picture and why we do the job that we do’. Gail also states that it ‘enabled me to continue to develop my skills and competences within a theoretical and practical setting, as well as, enabling me to become a reflective practitioner’.  Working and studying at the same time was not easy for Gail but it provided her with an income to provide for her family and a future career to look forward to.

Life after LWTT

Gail’s experience has been very important to her as she said  ‘I will never be able to thank LWTT enough for the experience it gave me for without the individualised support as well as peer support I would not have managed to juggle both my personal and work life as well as I did’.

Gail is now working as a Community Education Worker for a local authority to support lone parents to develop their personal and social development to enable them to access further education, training or employment opportunities.