This careers teacher turned into a work-from-home consultant.

Miriam loved being a careers teacher. She enjoyed the excitement of helping young people plan their career paths to realise their full potential.

But when a new-born baby added to her family of two older children – one of whom had high support needs – she found her employer’s lack of support and understanding created a significant barrier to combining work with her caring responsibilities.

She had returned from maternity leave and sought flexibility from her principal in reducing her teaching load.

It seemed a reasonable enough request – she just wanted to work three days a week with set hours.

The teacher who had been relieving her had been on three days a week with set hours, so it seemed inconceivable that her principal would refuse Miriam the same flexibility, as she was a long-term staff member.

But that is what happened. While Miriam was offered part-time work, she was told that she had to come in five days per week, and teach classes at varying times on those days.

Clearly, that was going to prove impossible.

“Coming in five days a week was not going to work for me at all. I also could not find carers flexible enough to look after my baby at so many varying times. For example, I might have to work from 11am-2pm on a Monday, 9am-11am on a Tuesday, 2pm-3.30pm on a Wednesday and so on. It was ridiculous.

“The principal was totally unsupportive and had already made it clear that she was unhappy about the number of female staff members taking maternity leave and then seeking flexible work arrangements.”

Miriam said that while Luke, her teenage son who has autism, went to school during the day, he still required a great of care and support and she needed flexibility to meet his care and education needs.

Having a baby at the same time had added extra demands. Like any mother, she loved all of her children and wanted to be able to spend quality time with them, but going to work five days a week was not meeting anyone’s needs.

So Miriam took the plunge and resigned. She set up a mobile careers consultancy as a secondary schools career and tertiary advice consultant. She informed her many contacts, developed over years in a careers advisor role, that she was available for visits to their schools.

She already had a strong reputation as an outstanding professional in her field, and very quickly, she began receiving calls from grateful principals at other schools, asking her if she could come in for a few days and work with Year 12 students in their school.

She also got relief work as a careers adviser. Pretty soon she was being offered speaking engagements as a careers advisor in schools, too.

“I found that I could structure my work to completely suit my own needs and the needs of my family,” she said.

“I have very busy periods, such as just before the end of Year 12, while at the beginning of the year, it is quiet. I can cancel and reschedule engagements if something important comes up on the home front and I can set my own hours. These are the positives.

“On the negative side I really do miss working collaboratively in a school environment. I love teaching in high schools and miss that. I sometimes find that it is hard to separate work life from home life as they roll into each other frequently.

“I often find myself doing the housework when I should be working, or catching up on work at midnight, when the kids are asleep, because the wheels feel off my plans during the day and now I have to catch up. I tend to work in intense bursts when I can. There are many competing priorities for my time.

“The baby is now three years old and I can look forward to a time when he goes to school and my days will be a little more predictable, so I should be able to take on more work and grow the business a bit more.

“But overall, I am happy with the choice I made. I just wish education departments were made to be more accommodating to meet their employee’s needs for workplace flexibility. They are losing a lot of great teachers by not taking this into account.”