“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Albert Einstein
Well… call me Nemo, because that fish was me.
I’m Scott the founder of SCCU. Throughout my childhood I was led to believe that I was stupid due to how we assess someone’s ability within this country. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t spell, I was placed in ALL the bottom sets at school and I was filled with embarrassment, self hate and lack of confidence in my ability.
Couple that with being a chubba and being bullied daily, I really didn’t believe I could achieve much.
“Scott, please see me.”
One of my biggest dreads at school would be that moment when you would see in red ‘’please see me’’ from the teacher. But worse than that… Scott bring your book up to read to me. You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach as you are heading up to the teachers desk. The pure embarrassment and shame that you knew you couldn’t make any sense of what it said on those pages.
One of my first coping strategies that I taught myself in this situation was to read the pictures to tell the story.
I was always relieved that the books were illustrated but I’ve also since become aware that my tactics for getting through these embarrassing moments at the front of class actually showed FAR more creativity and ability than just to simply read the words. This said, my luck ran out with this one when I moved to secondary school and pictures were a thing of the past so it was back to the drawing board.
I also realised that I had to work 3 times as hard as everyone else just to be average. What I always had was that stubbornness and a will to never be beaten no matter how hard it got. From my experience to date that is ALL that really matters in life. If you believe in something enough you can go out and get it and find a way.
The right work ethic and belief in yourself will take you wherever you truly want to go and can move mountains.
Everything that happened to me at school has led me to this point. To this business.
I knew that I wanted to really make a difference and support people to achieve their goals whatever their perceived ability. Not to feel a failure because their GCSE results say different. I wanted people to feel empowered and to know that it’s okay if sixth form and university is not for you. That there are alternatives to a happy career. To success. To fulfilment.
You start to learn in life when you leave school and real life lessons begin. You find out who you are, how you react in certain situations and what potential you really have to achieve in life.
We believe that you really can learn wherever you like. You do not need to learn in a classroom. You can get out there and learn through doing. You can enhance the abilities you have, the beauty is they are unique to you.
So get out there and write your own story and realise that not all classrooms have four walls.
We’d love to know….. where is your classroom?
