An Unconventional path from Teaching Assistant to Principal

So my own school, the CAO, started developing while I was finishing my initial studies in osteopathy. When I finally graduated as a newly minted osteopathic manual practitioner, the school was in its infancy. There were a handful of students around a single treatment table in a rented hotel room being taught by an American Osteopath who was doing all the teaching. I was the teaching assistant, and thus my teacher training had begun. The American osteopath was teaching the procedural processes of manipulation using techniques, a very different approach than where we are today. During that time I was also doing my graduate training in the UK and tending to my own very busy professional practice. Soon I started to teach in the evenings and weekends and a following started to develop around my approached in the lab. When the American Osteopathy left suddenly, I stepped into teaching full time out of necessity. We had about 80 students in our program and I wasn’t about to leave them stranded in their education. This was around 2011 when the WHO benchmarks for osteopathy training had been released and with a new framework mapped out, I started building out the school’s science curriculum and clinical training, while refining my treatment approaches in the lab. The new era of the CAO was born. The school moved from a 2500 hour technique program to a 4200 principles-based program. The only one of its kind in Canada.