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Aspirations at the Academy - Hugh

Hugh is a student at the Deaf Academy. He shares his love of sport and hopes to teach it

My name is Hugh and I really, really enjoy myself here. I've been in Exeter at the Deaf Academy for a while and it's just really great. You know, I moved there and of course the Academy's moved recently as well, so that was kind of quite difficult, because the original Academy closed and then we moved. But we also had to do a lot of online learning as well, which was interesting so doing a lot of stuff via Zoom particularly Maths and English. It was difficult, but I learned a lot during that time.
And looking ahead, what sort of profession would you like to have? What do you aspire to do or to be?
So I'd like to do maybe some sports coaching. Either with a hearing or deaf teams, yeah, or maybe coaching school children. Climbing is an interest, so maybe something like that. Again, if I was working with hearing children, then obviously I would need to have an interpreter with me as well. But it would be really nice just to kind of help children, you know, get confident and kind of, you know, help children. Again, especially in this country, you have to be aware of the weather, so it might be nice to be able to do some indoor training as well.
Why is this your interest and why would you like to expand it?
I think it's just nice to help people through sport and I think it'd be really good to kind of, you know, help to take children, but also for it to be a two-way thing as well, so you know for children to learn how to help others as well, and I think you can do that via sports - be that football, cricket, whatever, and I think it just kind of helps people kind of get on with things.
What has sport meant to you then over time?
Rugby and running for me, those are my real sports, but I also like cricket, football, well, all of them really. I think when people, you know, they get involved, they learn to work as part of a team.
So how will you go about becoming a coach and helping children as you want to?
I think need to get my, to go on courses to do my level one. So I'd be really interested in doing my level one course, which you can do online. So again, there are some other courses, some other online courses as well that you can do to help you get your coaching badges.
And what would this mean to you if you achieve this?
I think it would help me kind of focus to think this is what I need to achieve and I think that will certainly help me kind of focus on what I want to do.
And what might be tricky?
At the minute it's okay because if I have any issues I can just ask the staff to help, but obviously when I'm no longer at the college there may be some issues there of where I get support should I need it.
So when are we going to see you coaching young people in climbing?
Obviously I've still got a lot more learning to do, but I'd just really like to get in and do coaching as soon as I can.

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3 minutes