Exhaustion. Exhaustion and illness. They are the words of the week and what I did not experience last half term, I have been hit with full on in the face this half term. I am currently off sick for my second day with a throat infection, so I have decided to try and use my time constructively by finally writing another post for my blog.
To put it simply, I feel like the bar has been raised this half term and I certainly did commence the half term holiday with a false sense of security. In the last four weeks I have conquered two successful parents’ evenings, implemented a whole new spelling and guided reading system into my classroom, begun a detailed science assessment, kept on top of a heavy workload of marking (up until this week, anyway), attended trainings, dealt with various admin type jobs and on the odd occasion managed to see and teach my class. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining that I am on my own in this situation, nor without support. This is the lifestyle of every teacher in my school, indeed in the country I imagine, but I just cannot get over how different this half term is to the last!
Some of you may be thinking that I have started this blog entry off rather negatively, especially considering I have left it a month before writing. However, I do not mean for it to come across that I am moaning about my job in any way. Throughout all of this I have had immense support from SLT and my colleagues who I now consider close friends. What I am trying to convey is how FULL ON this job really is. And despite all the advice from uni lecturers, other seasoned professionals and fellow bloggers I wasn’t prepared! Advice is only helpful when you can relate it to experience and therefore somewhat paradoxical.
I also want to make it clear that I blame no-one who I am in direct contact with for the workload of my colleagues and I. As with any business, demands always come from the people who don’t actually do the job day-to-day and we all know to whom I refer! Let’s not dwell. There are enough voices out there fighting for the little folk already, and that is not what my blog is about.
So, back to me (minus a voice) and my little class. What a bunch they are! As I mentioned earlier, it sometimes feels that the time I spend actually in the class teaching them is the shortest part of my day. When I am with them though, they force me to experience every emotion under the sun… and good on them for being so wonderful as to do that! Every single one of them has a past, a personality and a present. In some cases, all three of those aspects are very closely linked and can make some days very tough. Tougher than any 8 year old should have to face. But that is the challenge of my job and that is the reason why I still love it. They can drive me crazy – especially with the chattering – but any behaviour is a reaction to something else and therefore I understand that if they are misbehaving, it is either because my behaviour management needs tweaking, or there is an external cause that I may or may not be aware of.
I feel confident enough to say that I have taught some very good lessons. I am still experiencing a sense that I don’t have the time to give it my all and it even feels like some lessons I am rushing to get things done. A day of teaching NEVER drags and you could always use more hours in the day. I think one of the reasons I have fallen ill is because I cannot switch off. I am still learning how to mark work effectively in the lesson so that I don’t burn myself out every evening marking books until 9pm. To me, marking is one of the hardest parts of the job because once I have seen to everything else, I don’t have the energy to, on some occasions, mark 120 odd pieces of work!
The other area I feel I need to work on is how to extend my highers. There are a couple of children in my class who are not far off being classed as gifted and talented and they are the children who I need to know how to push more in their learning. I actually said to a parent once that one of the biggest challenges of my job is to know how to challenge their child because they are so able in their work! Obviously I want all my pupils to make progress, but following a pupil progress meeting I have realised that I can’t just assume that my high ability pupils will stay at that point. I need to push them as much as every other child in my class, doing so by deepening and enriching their understanding of a subject. I must keep my growth mindset open.
There is probably so much more that I could write about but already it seems like one big blur. Time is flying by and now there is only 3 weeks of term left. Quite naturally, thoughts are turning to Christmas and even the children throughout the school are reacting to the C word already. I am now going to continue dosing myself up with medicine to ensure I am back in tomorrow. I want to do a maths morning with my class looking at the Singapore Bar method (something I should have taught this week but not been there to achieve it!) and also the school are having a belated Children In Need event by having a pyjama day. I have my penguin onesie at the ready!
From sheep to shepherdess 