Introduce yourself

I am Erica Tomlinson, I have been a Drama Teacher since 1997 in various schools, I gradually went to more inner city schools which are more challenging but excellent in many ways. In my spare time I sing with the London Philharmonic Choir – have sung with them for over 20 years now – even though it’s very stressful as you have to re-audition every 3 years, it’s the most stressful thing that I do willingly to myself. I have 2 children, one of them is 13, she’s a teenager – that’s nice… I also have an 11 year old son with SEN needs and quite complex medical needs as well. I also hold a wine and spirit education trust level three in wine, so in my spare time I do wine tasting. I have a little wine tasting company called through the grape vine limited. It’s basically like teaching kids about drama but teaching adults about wine, it’s the same skill set.

Could you outline the key milestones and experiences that have shaped your journey to your current position?

I’ve always liked teaching and understanding complex things and being about to boil them down into simpler things so that people can understand them, that makes me very happy. I was one of those kids that had registers for all her toys and stuff, so I probably did want to be a teacher. A bit of that was the fact I was super lazy at university, I thought I’ll do a teaching degree that’ll be nice! I really wanted to go to Canterbury for University but I didn’t get in, I applied to do my PGT and they turned me down and I was really cross, so I took a year out and went and looked at schools and decided that teaching was a really cool career and then I got into Cambridge for my PGT so HA Canterbury! I was very happy, so I did a lot of theatre in Cambridge which was a brilliant year of my life. I was then working at a suburban school, it was an amazing school I absolutely adored it – I was there for seven years. Then I went to Ecuador – that’s a long story I won’t bore you – I went there with this school and at this point I’d never been outside of Europe in my life. I took a group of kids there for a month, it was amazing and it completely changed my life. I thought right, I can stay in this school and still be teaching there until I’m 60 or I could travel the world on my own. So, when I was 30 I saved up and went travelling around the world on my own. I did an entire calendar year and visited 6 of the 7 continents, my biggest regret, one that I will sort out before I’m 60! Then I took a year out after that because I thought maybe I should be doing something different, I looked at going into voice acting and a few other careers but I thought, actually I really miss teaching. By that stage I’d done some supply teaching in inner city schools so I was in a really good position to get a job in a gritty, cool school. So that’s what I did!

Who are the women who have had the greatest impact on your journey?

I am going to go cheesy and say my Mum, she’s amazing. My parents split up when I was 8, so my mum was a single parent. She worked in the 80’s when it wasn’t necessarily standard for women to work in this time period. In the Sumer holidays when she couldn’t look after us because she was working she use to take my up to Holden to stay with my Gran, and my Gran was phenomenal – she was my hero. She lost her husband shortly after the war and she was this absolute powerhouse of a women. She worked in a bakery on her own, and she did everything on her own and then my mum did that as well. My Mum is 75 years old this year and she’s just done this thing were she was the National Operatic and Dramatic associations president, so every time an amateur theatre company that was part of Noda did a production, they could invite her to see it. In the year she was president she went to visit 182 shows across the UK and she drove 33,500 miles at 75 – she’s such an inspiration! She often says ‘oh I probably wasn’t with you enough when you were growing up’ but actually she’s taught me that you can do all of it. You can have a great relationship with your kids and still do stuff and be on your own and not need a man.

For other people, I’m going to say Kylie Minogue. I love her. I think because she’s quite low brow but always really true to herself and she’s reinvented herself. She’s one of the few women to have a top ten album over five decades which is pretty amazing in itself. I love the fact that she’s really unapologetic about her early stuff with Stock Aitken Waterman, if you go and see shows now she’ll always stick one of those early 80’s songs in and she’ll do it in a different way. She’s not embarrassed by her past, she embraces it. This is me. I love people that are true to themselves and I really think she is. I could mention women that are really clever or powerful and all that, but I just like people that are true to themselves.

What does it mean to you to have inspired our International Women’s Day Campaign Beer ‘Drama Queen’?

It is entirely overwhelming. Amina will tell you that I’m not often lost for words, but I am lost for words! It’s pretty unbelievable, particularly because it’s about women. I’m really lucky to teach amazing women and to know amazing women, I’m surrounded by amazing women. We’ve just finished our school production and all of the people in the lighting and sound box were girls this years, which is amazing! People like Amina that I’ve taught, people that are inspirational to me, it’s lovely to know that I’m inspirational to them as well. I know this can be said of any career, but as a teacher sometimes you sit back and you think ‘oh my gosh’ anything that I say could make a massive difference to somebody’s life. It’s likely to be something that I didn’t know that I’d said, I’m not trying to be inspirational but something that you say can really resonate with someone.

What personal and professional accomplishments are you most proud of?

I am really proud of my wine tasting qualification. I did Level 2 and Level 2 is quite cheap *laughs* – lets talk money. I really wanted to do Level 3 because I’d got the bug by then and I didn’t realise quite how much went into vinification and all that kind of stuff, I find it endlessly fascinating. Level 3 costs £800 and I couldn’t justify £800 when I’ve got a family, it’s not my career and I’m not planning to go into the wine industry at all, so that’s when I set up my company. This wasn’t going to be a massive company, I wasn’t going to push it on social media I was going to grow it by word of mouth but as soon as I get £800 clear profit I will do my Level 3. Five years of blood, sweat and tears went into that Level 3 because it took me that long to get the £800… I charge way too cheap for my time and talent. I did the qualification and of course I passed it because I had too, otherwise I wouldn’t have been very happy with myself.

I’m proud of the fact that I’m not an old women yet despite the fact that I’m getting on in years. I don’t feel like I’ve let myself get old and that makes me really happy. My younger friends tell me that ‘I hope when I’m a mother I’m like you, your indefatigable’, I don’t feel that I am, but it’s really nice to hear. I like to keep my brain active and meet as many people as possible, I’m proud of that too.

And I’m proud every year when results come out for GCSE’s and A levels!

How do you effectively balance your work-related responsibilities with your personal life and independent business?

*laughs* I don’t know whether I do, I’ll be honest. I mean, you always get residual guilt and I always feel like I’m spreading myself a bit too thin but I think I can’t be bored so I just do as much as I can and I try and make sure I’ve got the time to see my kids as well – I took my son to see Dog Man this weekend – Dog Man the movie. I think maybe as a woman as well, and as a working mother, it’s really difficult not to feel guilty about the fact that I can’t pick my kids up every day and the fact that my son has to go to after school club – every day – and I have to have wrap-around care for them. What it’s about is making the moments count – so if I’m singing, I’m singing 100% and if I’m mothering, I’m mothering 100% and I try and make sure that everything is 100% when it happens.

Do you have any projects lined up for the future that you are excited for if not, what’s next for Erica Tomlinson?

I’m going to carry on being a teacher, people tell me that I’m too old and I should be a Senior Leader or a Deputy Headteacher but I don’t ever want to be that. I want to carry on being in the classroom and telling kids how transformative theatre is and helping students find their talent, it’s really important to me.

I also really want to do another wine qualification but I don’t want to do the Level 4 because that’s degree level, I’d quite like to do a qualification in specific countries. I’d quite like to do a French wine scholar and learn more about French wine. At the moment I’m also learning French, which is *laughs* hilarious because I’m really rubbish at learning languages, always have been. However, my daughter is a bit of a francophile, I’m a bit of a Francophile so were learning fresh together. She’s learning at school, I’m relearning it after doing terrible at it at school. It’s quite cute we text each other in really bad French, so that’s nice.