On The Last Term
This has been an interesting term. Eyes open, I got to work day one with a positive attitude: let’s see how I feel about all this. Even though COVID still ravages on, in schools we have pretended it doesn’t exist. I’ve worn my mask, but most don’t, and in terms of how it is to be teaching it has felt pretty much like any other year. So despite these unusual times, it has been a fairly usual experience of teaching. No classes out for weeks in isolation. My own classroom back. Assemblies. Meetings. The only changes have been positive: a new building open and offering some new resources; a new Head teacher with a new and exciting vision for the school. I have no bad classes either. No group on my timetable which makes my heart sink when I see it, as I have had in some years. If the job of teaching is to be judged then this has been a pretty good term in which to do it: no surprises, no major headaches, just the daily sense of normal in this particular job.
And so, I have judged.
Is this still what I want to do with my life?
Is it fulfilling me intellectually and creatively?
Am I in broad agreement with the aims of the mission of what secondary UK education is in 2021?
Am I making the sort of difference I want to make?
Do I feel this is the best use of my time and talents?
These questions and many more have been bouncing around in my head since September. Every day. Every week. Every month. And as we come to the end of the term and the first long holiday of the academic year approaches, I think it’s time to reflect on what I have observed and felt this last term. How do I feel when I wake up in the morning and put on that suit for school? How do I feel on the commute there, and is it any different from the commute back? When I walk into my classroom, where is my head at? When I leave it at the end of the day, do I feel my time has been well spent? And I guess the really big one: what is the nature of my work? Am I, as a teacher, spending my time teaching, or has the job morphed into something else? Paperwork and accountability - back-covering and Ofsted cowering rather than education and helping young people to develop as thinkers? Are we learning as a profession from things like the lockdown and new research into educational ideas, or is our professionalism merely the nice name we’ve given to obedience and maintaining the status quo? Is the majority of my professional time spent doing things that I believe make me a better educator to my students, or done ticking boxes for bosses?
I have been thinking about all of this over the last term, trying to look at what my job is as objectively as possible, without the negative impact of COVID swaying things as they inevitably did last year and the year before.
It was 2019, I think, when I first stood on a morning duty playground, looking at the students around me playing football and thinking to myself “have I been here too long?” It was my eighth year at the school at that point and I had seen a whole cohort through from Year 7 to their leaving the school in Year 13. Was my work here largely done?
But then the busy-work of the academic year took sway, and then there was a pandemic to deal with.
This September I stood on that same playground and thought the same. Only this year I didn’t lose the thought as the job’s demands took hold, I kept it in the back of my mind as an observing principle. A hypothesis to test and investigate as the new term progressed. And now, at the end of the term, I will spend the holidays when they come next week processing and analysing the data.