Knowledge Zone

The early years sector in Ireland is full of energetic, passionate, experienced and creative staff who work hard with children week in week out.

A thought that crosses the minds of many working in the sector is 'what will I work at when I’m not able for children every day?'

We have all heard this question at least once or thought it ourselves.

Natasha Murphy is the Manager of Portobello Montessori School, a tutor in the Portobello Early Years department and a current student of our Master’s in Early Childhood Studies.  

She explains how completing her Level 8 BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies degree opened the opportunity for her to tutor the levels below her own qualifications. She now tutors the Level 5 and Level 6 ECCE courses at Portobello.  

Natasha explains how this work as a tutor helps to deepen her knowledge, makes writing her masters assignments easier, provides a wage for her during the summer months and allows her to share her passion with those joining the workforce.

“I wanted to get into tutoring because when you work with children you know that it’s going to be a long-term job, but you also have to think of the fact that your back is not going to be able for it forever.

“It’s nice to have a different option for when you are that little bit older that you have something else to fall back on.

“I wanted to expand my knowledge further and what better way to do it than going on to do my masters while also tutoring on Level 5 and Level 6.

“I love it for the summer aspect, because we close for two months of the summer (Montessori school), we don’t get paid so it’s nice for me then to be able to slot in that tutor work for July and August and be able to get a wage out of it.

“I did my Level 7 and Level 8 and I was looking to further my career in a different way and I suppose for me having tutoring there is lovely to keep continuing my knowledge and to share my passion so that hopefully early years educators coming through college now are learning from the experiences that I am sharing with them, that’s what I love, getting to tell people my story, my journey and then sharing it with them so they build their own journey.  

“I have students coming into my Saturday workshops or evening workshops and I am learning from their experiences too, they might use something in their setting that I want to know more about so you are learning from each other as well I love when students share their ideas because that helps me to bring more ideas into my own classroom too,” she said.

Portobello Institute offers a range of early childhood education courses and degrees from Level 5 to Level 9, visit our early childhood department.