A New Career at 60? Why It’s Never Too Late to Dream Big

As a former primary school teacher, Beverley has always loved working with children. For her, kindergarteners and first graders were always the most gratifying to teach.

‘Prep and Grade one and two were beautiful to work with. [It was] very rewarding,’ says Beverley. When the time came to retire, Beverley realised that she didn’t want to be just ‘another retiree’ and this was her opportunity to redefine what retirement means.

So at 61, the grandmother of eight isn’t touring around Australia in a caravan or relocating to a small beachside town; instead she’s hitting the books!

Beverley joins a growing cohort of baby boomers who are staying in the workforce longer and using their twilight years to pursue work that’s meaningful, fulfilling, and helping to grow that all-important nest egg.

Her passion for nurturing young inquisitive minds fuelled Beverley’s desire to take a side step from teaching into the growing childcare sector. With the recent legislative changes to the childcare industry, Beverly knew she had to go back and get qualified as an accredited childcare worker, so she enrolled at a university full-time.

But with eight grandchildren running around, she quickly realised that traditional full-time study just wasn’t going to work. ‘I struggled…[it] was a lot of hard work because I still had to run the kids around,’ says Beverley. ‘I was burning the candle at both ends.’

Determined to make her dreams a reality despite the odds, she decided to try a vocational childcare course with Online Courses Australia, and hasn’t looked back since. Beverley says she absolutely loves the flexibility an online course affords her, and how easy it is to switch back and forth between minding the grandkids and working through her studies.

‘It’s the way to go because I can work here [at home]. I can work at the office. If the grandkids are here I can sit outside on the deck and do my course there.’

Having studied on campus when her own children were teens, Beverley says that studying with young children is even harder. Her advice to mothers and other carers is, ‘Do it online. Believe me, I’ve done both!’

Feeling inspired by Beverley’s experience? Study where you want, when you want with a course from Online Courses Australia.