The Madness in Me

A number of contributing factors conspired to bring on a clear out frenzy in me today...first I did battle with our garden, cutting the grass, weeding areas, and using the hoe to clear the grass verges from the paving slabs. Boy was that an exhausting task, like many people I want a spectularly beautiful and groomed garden but am a bit of a weekend monthly warrior and always underestimate how much hard work keeping a neat and tidy garden is.

Then, not content with that battle I went to war on various boxes of academic files. Boxes I might add that still haven't been unpacked from when we moved over two years ago. What can I say, it seemed like a good idea and I reasoned there was no time like the present. Apparently. I ruthlessly gutted lever arch folder and file after file, setting aside nostalgia and telling myself if you haven't used this stuff in the last three months and don't envision using it in the next three, it goes in the bin. Yes, including that card little A gave you on one of your placements during teacher training.

Why oh why am I torturing myself with a spring clean on the last day of a half term holiday?...I anticipate us moving anytime between now and January. Plus, I'm restless, pensive, sorting through things that refuse to reconcile themselves, and like I said, apparently this is as good a time as any to roll my sleeves up and waste a perfectly beautiful sunny day, which is probably going to be of the few hot days we're going to get, in the spare room with dust and the dead bodies of spiders. Brilliant!

Oh, the joy of having things on your mind that you can't process and deal with.

10 Things I've Learnt About Supply Teaching

I've been working as a supply teacher for almost a year now, this isn't my first academic year supply teaching but it is my most recent and I've learnt so much.

1. You will always feel like the new girl
No matter how long your booking is for and how much you are included in meetings, training sessions, nights out...there is a part of you that will always feel like the new girl.  It's not really about your psychology or insecurities, it's more about the nature of being the last through the door and semi permanence of your position.

2. Everyone wants something for nothing
The school, certainly on longer bookings, will try to take advantage of your professionalism and get you to do work that isn't part of your supply role and that you should be paid extra for.  Every school will do this because every school is struggling budget wise, it's up to you how far you let them do this.

3. You will fall in love with the class
This is especially so for the longer bookings and it will sneak up on you unexpected. One moment you will be pulling your hair out with frustration as you ask yourself for the millionth time why they can't remember their capital letters at the start of their sentences, then suddenly looking around the class you'll remember a little quirk for each of them. Yes, even the nose picker with one hand perpetually down his trousers and your heart will swell and melt.

4.  You will receive offerings of acceptance
They will bring you flowers from the field, draw you pictures, make you cards and hug you, all a sign  that they have accepted you as part of their life.

5. Marking their work will be the best and worst task
You'll be sat hunched over a mountain of books, straining your eyes to read their spidery handwriting and trying to decipher their phonetic spelling, your head will ache with the effort and you'd much rather be reading a book or working in the garden, or even cleaning your oven for that matter.  Then suddenly you'll burst out laughing at some part of their story, you'll be incredibly touched by the evocative imagery in their poetry and you save that moment as a buoy to use in your darker moments in which you question your calling.

6. You are always a teacher
You will wake in the middle of the night with the sudden realisation that you haven't finished your planning/have had a fantastic activity idea/having pieced together separate observations and incidents you have to raise a safeguarding issue. Everything you see whilst out shopping/on holiday/on a family trip could and would be fantastic in a lesson.  One part of your brain and self, no matter where you are, what you are doing or who you are with, is always caught up in the web of being an educator.  You will even go to the gym and correct people's incorrect use of the possessive apostrophe on the whiteboard where they've written their exercises. Might have done that just yesterday.

7.  You're absolutely exhausted
You experience levels of exhaustion that you've never felt before. I don't mean the kind of exhaustion from sleep deprivation, I mean the kind that leaves you antisocial with the immune system of a butterfly and needing a month of solitude before you can even string a coherent sentence together.  You will sit at the traffic lights in your car trying to remember what day of the week it is in which month and where you are meant to be going.  Even when the driver behind you honks because the light has been green for a while you will move off hoping that the answers to those questions will come to you before you're officially late for wherever it is that you're meant to be.

8. Your immune system will be virtually nonexistent
If there is something going around -you'll catch it.

9. You will have favourites
No matter how much you remind yourself that they aren't your class and you shouldn't get attached - you will.  You will love them all, worry about them all and think about them all..but you'll have favourites. Mine is the cheeky H who has a beautiful smile, smartness that's endearing and the worst penmanship ever. It's also Z, who comes to school in the filthiest of clothes, has no parent input at home and is very quiet, and finally N who is the sweetest girl I know with impeccable manners and always gives 100% in everything.

10. Moving on will feel impossible but you will do it
The thought of moving on will feel heart wrenchingly impossible and it will break your heart to know the children are psychologically healthy enough to have fond memories of you but to also move on. Yet as the end of your booking approaches you will start to distance yourself, to turn toward the next one and make room in your heart for your next borrowed class.

Is There an Echo in the Room

It's an endless source of amusement to my sisters and me to purposely tease each other about turning into our mother, but obviously only when it's a humourously perceived negative trait. We never actually compliment each other, unless it's an awkward compliment that borders on an insult, in which case a weighty silence always follows and one of us then changes the subject quickly or leaves the room on some pretence. Yes, we're incredibly normal like that.

Working at the same school with the same class of maddening cherubs I've begun to notice a disturbing increase in my sympathy for my teachers and also for children on the receiving end of an exhausted and frustrated teacher. It's an entirely thought proving paradox to be ensnared in at the best of philosophical moments and heart breaking in the colder darker parts of my inner machinations.

What unsettles me most is just how much I open my mouth and my mother comes out! I never saw it happening. I never heard her voice whispering in my ear before the words tripped off my tongue. I never took note of many of her turn of phrases I absorbed like a sponge. It's hilarious and refreshing, and if I'm half the teacher my mother was, the children I teach are in good hands.

Wednesday Wonderings

It's been a while (more like forever) since I last posted one of these insightful glimpses into the randomness that is my thought process and imagination, and if I had my wits about me I'd offer an excuse...I did say "if".

1. How a child can swear blind that they've no idea how to use the clues to solve the problem of finding the missing number for the better part of an hour, only to complete it in minutes when I take away part of his lunch break? Funny old thing that.

2. Why has Spring forgotten to come this year? We had hail stones that were almost the size of 5 pence pieces at the weekend. Brilliant!

3. Where I got the misguided notion from that supply teaching would mean less stress and a better quality of life, you know that achieving that whole working to live and not living to work thing....yeah, not happening.

4. Why do children fart so much? Seriously, there aren't enough windows in my classroom to help with that one.

5. If life is short why do staff meetings feel like an eternity?

6. Just how on a Monday am I to mark 68 books by 11:30 when I am teaching all morning and on playground duty? I've got nothing in solution to that.

7. Who do I need to thank for the 1% salary increase and the 1.4% increase to National Insurance rendering me ACTUALLY WORSE OFF!? Cheers modern equivalent to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

8. Why do they keep giving the job of Education minister to oxygen thieving paper shuffling pushing village idiots? £££ that will be why.

9. Why after having itchy feet to move for so long am I now so reluctant to? Because you're difficult and contrary.

10. Why can't I drag my exhausted butt out of bed for work and wake startled with leopard print spots in front of my eyes when the alarm goes off Monday to Thursday, yet the weekend comes around and I'm up with birds in search of coffee and watching them grub about in the garden? Because you're weird.

11. Will I ever find the words to describe just how challenging, amazing, exhausting, thrilling and maddeningly ironic teaching children is? Probably not.

Supply and Demand

In September of last year I went back to supply teaching once I'd completed my NQT year. To be entirely frank it was a really easy decision to make, I weighed my stress levels, exhaustion, the work load and my mood against my need for quality of life and love for my marriage. Many non-teaching professionals across the world are unaware of just how many arguments between husbands and wives are about the amount of work teachers do, how little time and attention they truly give their loved ones. I'm not masquerading under the elitist illusion that teaching professionals are alone in the domestic strife caused by the pressure of workloads, it's endemic to modern society unless you are wealthy enough not to need to have to work for a living. And that statement there - 'work for a living' is what made me go back to supply teaching, I want to work to live not have my life consumed by work.

On the plus side since starting in September I've hardly been out of work, aside from early in September and January when teachers hadn't had a chance to run themselves into the ground and fall prey to illness but otherwise I've been turning down bookings. Yes, I've had the luxury of turning down work because supply work and listening to my mind and body needs allows me to do that.

My agency have been pretty good, accepting when I say 'no thank you' to bookings, checking in with me while I am at bookings and providing feedback from schools. I don't expect any different as a happy worker is someone making everyone money. That isn't to say I've not had to chase them up for various things, or fight my own corner at times to not take bookings when they are in desperate need, or push back at schools when I feel they are starting to take advantage of my good nature (the last is a work in progress).

I've been extremely lucky that the two schools, yes I've only been to two schools since starting supply in September because both have continued to ask and book me on a weekly rolling basis, have been fantastic and I've loved them. I love the children I'm currently working with to the point I know I won't be dried eyed when it comes to leaving, but I will leave and I'm okay with that. I can forego the pleasure of hearing their clambering need for my attention so they can show me the work they've completed, or to share with me just as I need to take the register their latest joke, or their desperation to tell me all about their weekend as we're going into mass. My heart will break but I am confident there will be others and my fingers ar crossed that there will be.

Undeniably it's fantastic to be in demand as a supply teacher, I know I've been accepted by the children because I receive offerings of their affection on a daily basis and the permanent staff have accepted me by offering their support and guidance. I've been included in daily school life in every way.

So while I am in demand as a supply teacher, while we as a family unit are fortunate enough for us to have the luxury of choosing where and when I work, I am going to continue listening to my mind and body and making sure I get the balance right between supplying others demands of me.

Strangers

If you believe all clichés: people come into your life for a reason and once that reason has been fulfilled then it's time for them to move on, all good things must come to an end, we grew a part...then I shouldn't be surprised we are where we are.

I am though.

And so disappointed too.

It's true we stopped making an effort with each other.
We stopped texting and talking and sharing the big things in our lives.
Gifts began to reek of duty rather than insight, they were no longer designed to show appreciation or affection a long time ago.

When we began to change we stopped reaching out to each for support and mutual acceptance, some of our hearts lacked sincerity and one of us went through the motion of saying what they thought the other wanted to hear. The other pretended she cared.

I understand that as we grow and change people come and go from our lives, I just always assumed that that was a teenage thing, not a late thirties thing.

If I'm honest I know I've censored myself, my feelings, thoughts, opinions and I lost the will to allow myself to be vulnerable.

It happens I know, to lazy people and people who stop caring.

I'm still sad and disappointed too.

Love and Dragons

The other day I happen to be in the vicinity of a friend discussing her daughter-in-law issues, I listened without offering an opinion because it wasn't my place to, but after...I started thinking about my own mother-in-law issues. I began to wonder if grandchildren were involved if we'd be so amicable or would she also fear I'd withhold them because we disagreed?

For the most part I've just accepted it's a mother-in-law perogative to be pushy and domineering especially when it comes to their sons. Why? Well because it's about control, jealousy and things so deeply primal and innate I'll be damned if I'm intelligent enough to figure them out and impose order because I'm not a mother.

Generally speaking I get on pretty well with my mother-in-law J, she's an independent hard working woman who has really come into her own over the last ten years. The change in her confidence and self-esteem is wonderful to see, and I'm proud of her accomplishments. As mother-in-laws go she's a good one; kind, caring, considerate and generous...

..I know you can hear the but coming...BUT there are times her taking over, smothering and general narcissism have me rolling my eyes and leaving the room before my inner monologue becomes a soliloquy. I have very little time or patience for those who show off, celebrate your success and discuss the compliments you have been paid but bragging and boasting is just plain abnormal egotism. It's also inexorably insipid and tedious. In addition to liking to sing her own praises, when we visit she takes over and I take a back seat. I do this because L's parents live 8,000 miles away and those 2-3 weeks once or twice a year are the only time he gets to spend with them. Geography aside, I won't put him in the position where he is stuck between a rock and a hard place: us! You've got to pick your battles and to date we've not clashed over anything. I might once have aired my opinion on her husband's selfish response and total absence of concern when L was in a car crash which totalled his car, and I might not have minced my words or left any ambiguity to how much I applauded her love in staying with a man so undeniably petty and callous. I might have done that. Once.

I wonder what her issues with me are: no grandchildren? Too opinionated? Too indecisive? Too hotheaded? Too moody? Too demanding? Too aloof? Too dismissive? I know she feels I 'seduced her son' because she's told a table full people - twice. Well, aren't I the veritable tramp?

Either which way, derisive humour and comments aside, I know I'm lucky with J if the worst of our relationship issues is the minor complaint that she has a tendency to brag too much and take over. It could be far worse and I am thankful for that. I miss her when we're here and no one makes Christmas special in the way that she does, and above all I am reverently aware without her I wouldn't have L and for him I'd put up with her being a complete overbearing dragon.