Do you ever have one of those days? Well I’m having one of those weeks!
I’ve come to the conclusion that teaching means living your life in blocks of 6-8 weeks. I find myself saying “oh I’ll do it in the next holidays”. This just can’t be right. There has to be a better way – a way that means being able to give 100% to my job but also have a life too … or maybe I just have high expectations of myself.
My car needs servicing, my roots need re-colouring, I have an insurance cheque from my hubbies car-crash twelve months ago that needs paying in the bank but I can’t get to the bank when it’s open. My house is a mess (ok I know that’s relative but for me it’s not as tidy as I’d like) – there are piles of textbooks “here, there and every flipping where” – there is a pile of paperwork that needs sorting out. I constantly have a pile of clothes waiting to be ironed or put away that my spare room resembles a laundry. I cut my garden back a couple of weeks ago and the cuttings are still in a pile in the middle of the patio (the green bin was full!)… I’ve got my mother in law around on the weekend and I can already hear her tutting as she looks behind my sofa checking to see if I’ve cleaned my skirting boards recently (ever!??!).
Sometimes people who have “real” jobs in the “real world” forget that I teach. I teach 20ish hours a week just like any other normal classroom teacher. I “happen” to blog a bit. I am not a professional blogger. I still find it amazing when I look at the number of hits that the blog gets, but then again is it because of this that it gets the traffic it does? The fact that I am a teacher – I understand the pressure that teachers are under and that is part of my reason for sharing. Across the country there are 100’s if not 1000’s of us doing the same thing and if I can save someone some time surely that’s a good thing? Right?
I remember the days when I worked in the real world too – my house was immaculate – minimalist but more importantly tidy! Thinking about it – I wasn’t home 2 or 3 nights a week so it would be tidy! I also had a lady that came in and “did for me” which may have helped. I also remember the reasons I gave it all up … I didn’t particularly like the person I was becoming: I was ruthless. Fecking ace at my job but so very shallow and harsh. There are times when I’ve seen glimpses of my former self recently and I don’t like myself when it happens.
As I wrote this I was reminded by my hubbie that it is all “self-inflicted” and if we hadn’t (using his words!) have “knobbed off on a jolly” to Hong Kong at half term I wouldn’t be stressing about the things I need to do – he also reminded me that I don’t “do stress” and just get on with it. He is right! He is always right!
I’m tired. I’m irritable and I haven’t eaten chocolate for a couple of days. Tomorrow will be “operation house tidy” and the first thing on my list is … chocolate!
PS: I wrote this last night and “slept on” whether to publish or not (and I never do that self-editing thing!) – the main reason being whether it was just me writing a load of twaddle and gumpfh (it is! but I don’t care!). The one thing I promised myself when I started blogging was that I would be true to myself the point is … we all have bad days …it really isn’t the end of the world! Today is a new day … let’s do this!
I’ve got to add the crash was 12 months ago – the cheque is only 3 weeks old! Otherwise I wouldn’t be paying it in ☺️
I fully understand your frustrations and the sad thing is that it is not fair that you and all the other ‘000s of teachers should be put in this position. I’m guessing you don’t have children but imagine if you did, what sort of parent would you be able to be? Try noting down the time you spend on teaching in a typical week, you’ll probably hit 60 to 70 hours. The European Working Time directive prohibits organisations from making their employees work more than 48 hours because it is unhealthy but somehow this doesn’t seem to apply to teachers.
Furthermore, similar to you I came into teaching from ‘the real world’ and I can testify that teaching is a really difficult job, 1 teaching hour is much much harder than any hour in any job I did before teaching. In the ideal world teachers should be spending about 30 to 40 hours a week teaching, preparing and marking with the rest of the time free for research and maybe private tuition to top up the poor salary.
I’m sure that if you continue the way you are you’ll get into the SLT if that’s your ambition (the route to SLT is long hours), if you do please remember that teachers need to have a life outside of school.
Thank you for this!!!! New to Twitter and ‘blogging’ teachers (I don’t blog – I read others!!) – I was really starting to feel quite depressed that all these up and coming teachers (I have been teaching since 1990) know everything, have loads of time and energy that i haven’t felt in the 22 years of having children, can utilise technology in a way i can only dream of, and appear perfectly organised to the rest of the Maths teaching community.
My house regularly gets a ‘spring clean’ every school holiday, I haven’t been out of the country in a year and half, I have spent 3 and half years getting physio for a car crash only finally being finalised, shopping is done online since in person demands too much time and effort, my car needs more repairs (or I need a new one – more shopping that is too time-consuming!) and i really really need to find a new dentist that doesn’t take off every school holiday as well!!
I love teaching – only career for me ever since I was 4! – and really wanted to let you, and the others i follow on Twitter how much I appreciate all these resources you somehow find the time to create for the rest of us, and how extremely useful they are. Hang in there, tell your Mom-in-law to help or stop tut-tutting, and maybe treat yourself to a cleaning lady one week for a 5 hour session while you go to the hairdressers!!! and out for lunch with hubby 🙂
Thank you for your comments … it means a lot. It’s Sunday night and I survived my mother in law visit! She is lovely though and I’m now grateful that my house is clean and tidy … if only some of the bags of school stuff were stuffed under the stairs to “hide” them.
Some great ideas especially like the idea of a cleaner while I get my hair done! Next on my list is the car service next weekend and while its being done I’m planning some shopping next weekend.
Teaching is one of those jobs that if you let it means that you can always find something that needs doing … I have learned to say its “good enough” and really mean it … life is just too damned short.