Life Beyond Teaching
About Us
Penny Freeston started Life Beyond Teaching to help teachers live their best life. She says "Just as no one on their death bed wanted to spend longer at the office, no teacher would regret spending less time marking books or writing lesson plans. There has to be life beyond teaching for all those dedicated professionals needing to restore balance in their lives. Teachers deserve to lighten up and feel good about themselves to combat daily stress and strains. And those who have given their lives to teaching deserve the best support to move on in other spheres or enjoy healthy, happy retirements."
Penny works from home tutoring, writing and coaching. She has published 11 books, hosts a writers' circle and poetry group and has written for a number of magazines and journals. Penny was a full time primary teacher for 20 years in east London.
She says, "I wished I had known then that:-
- working till 11 at night and at weekends was not obligatory
- writing endless guidelines and schemes of work was not my soul purpose (although Ofsted did say I had the best in the country!)
- switching off and going away EVERY holiday was essential
- on many occasions I could have said No
- I deserved confidential one to one support
- at the end of the day, however fulfilling, my brilliant career was ONLY A JOB
- there is so much potential in everyone to do something different
- time spent with family and friends is really precious
- when you rediscover your new purpose you feel 19 again
- there really is life beyond teaching!
If only I could have had a life coach!"
In addition to working with individual clients, face to face or on the telephone, Penny runs coaching workshops to help people coach themselves or address specific issues. She has helped people of all ages move on in different areas including relationships, career change, time management, fitness, writing books, weight loss, self esteem and even reorganising the home. She was trained by the Coaching Academy, the largest training organisation for coaches in Europe and passed all her exams with Distinction.
Penny was a finalist in the Excelerate Power Coaching Awards 2004 when she coached Lucy Hamilton, a forensic psychiatric nurse at Broadmoor, to change her stressful career. Lucy is now a lecturer in Social Care.
Penny Helps To Unlock Dreams (from an article in the Ilford Recorder January 2004)
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A woman who helped someone
escape from Broadmoor was short listed for an award this week. But Penny Freeston doesn't spend her days baking nail files into fruitcakes - she is a life coach who helps people achieve their goals. The 50-year-old former teacher turned to life coaching when she stopped work and now runs workshops and telephone and face to face coaching sessions from her home in Derby Road, South Woodford. Life coaching is an interactive process where the coach guides someone towards their chosen goals. These may concern relationships, career, self-confidence, financial matters or feeling that life has drifted off course. |
Penny explained: "I help people to identify what it is they want
and help them focus, on how to get it."
She was shortlisted for the Accelerate Life Coaching life makeover of
the year award and attended a glitzy ceremony in London on Tuesday.
Penny pinpointed one of her greatest achievements as helping 54 year old
Lucy Hamilton, a forensic psychiatric nurse at Broadmoor high security
hospital to follow her, dreams and escape her unhappy life.
Penny said: "I coached her out of, Broadmoor and within three months
she had fulfilled her lifelong ambition to teach and she was appointed
as a lecturer in Social Care a college.
"She was a nurse for 30 years and even without teaching, qualifications,
which she has since got, she got a job teaching."
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A LIFE coach from South Woodford reached the final of the Life Makeover of the Year competition with her student, a former psychiatric nurse at Broadmoor. Penny Freeston from Derby Road was presented with a certificate by TV presenter Phllippa Forester for her work in helping 54-year-old Lucy Hamilton from Basingstoke change her career after 12 years working at the Berkshire prison hospital. Mrs Hamilton now has a Job working as a Lecturer in social care. Our picture shows life coach Penny Freeston (right) with her pupil Lucy Hamilton at the Makeover awards ceremony in County Hall (C) From an article in the Woodford and Wanstead Guardian, January 2004 |
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| Life Beyond Teaching offers help and support but is unable to take responsibility for individual results |