Importance of Education and Opportunities

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Photo Credit:
Lynne Norman
Lynne Norman knows the importance of education and opportunities. After working in Further Education for many years, she joined Watford UTC (University Technical College) where she spent the last 3 years dedicating her role as a BTEC Lead Practitioner and running a Cisco Academy. Lynne has spent approximately 11 years in teaching and inspired students of all ages. Her past involvement with Cisco Academy led her to offer the current students she teaches a digital education through virtual learning environments, providing a more accessible and independent learning experience. In the region of a thousand students have been educated through Lynne's classrooms and they have been taught various courses from the Cisco NetAcad platform such as Get Connected, Introduction to Cyber Security, Introduction to Packet tracer and many more. With a high percentage of her classrooms from Years 10 up to 13 passing their courses, Lynne’s passion and dedication to her students’ successes are evident.

Lynne has always shown each pupil the significance of education while also encouraging them to take on other qualifications and studies to help further their educational and career prospects. Each student who has taken an extra course has shown the soft skills and hard skills needed for a successful and long career due to the time and energy that she continues to put in daily. Beyond teaching, she updates her existing certifications such as CCNA and also values learning newly available courses which have the potential to be incorporated within her classrooms. My personal journey with Lynne has helped me to be able to achieve more of my dreams than I believed I could and proceed into a company like Cisco. 

We only see a handful of women in the IT industry within a technical role. Statistics from 2019 demonstrate to us that women make up 24% of the core-STEM workforce [1]. Lynne explained that we need to give suitable opportunities to females from a young age and we need to also ensure that we give them the correct exposure similar to how it is presented to young males. She believes that as young females begin their venture into a working environment, because of their limited experience within technology education (also due to various internal and external factors, such as family, friends, educators, businesses and media), they then tend to not be attracted to journeying through an IT career pathway. Within Lynne’s classes she always encourages and is determined to have more female involvement from all different backgrounds, so that even if the young female student does not see IT as a career prospect, they would at least have essential digital skills required for many career opportunities that are currently available across all sectors.

I asked Lynne what advice she would give someone thinking about becoming a Networking Academy Instructor and she said:
 “Any training you get the opportunity to fulfil take it with two hands, network and ask questions. Don’t be scared to try or take the step to do more. If I can do It, then it puts that confidence in every one of my students too.”
Lynne is an advocate for her students to learn digital skills, as she understands that in this day and age basic IT knowledge and skills are essential to have. With coronavirus having pushed the education delivery into remote learning, reliable platforms such as Cisco NetAcad have courses and additional content that can be utilised for teaching within most remote classrooms and for independent student learning. We thank Lynne for her constant enthusiasm, passion and dedication towards education and her students!

Teereth Kaur
Former student of Lynne Norman, and current Cisco Apprentice


To learn about the academies and courses featured in this blog, please visit:
Watford UTC
Teaching Digital - Cisco Networking Academy Courses

If you would like to learn about other Cisco Networking Academy Students and Instructors, please visit:
Cisco Networking Academy Instructors
Cisco Networking Academy Students

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