Rifling through some paperwork, I found something I’d scribbled down in the
twilight morning hours of the 4th January, the day I went BACK TO SCHOOL. Now, a
few weeks later, it seems to me melodramatic and self-indulgent, but I’m going to
post it anyway, if only to remind myself that feeling like absolute shite about
going back to school is a normal part of life. I think that the dread is stirred
up by my sub-conscious so that when I do actually get to school, none of it seems
as bad as my crazy-ass self would have me believe, and therefore I retain the
will to carry on, and I also manage to save myself the bother of a trip to the
Head’s office with my resignation letter gripped tightly into my sweaty palm.
So here’s what my dread-filled self penned that cold mid-winter morning:
One of my lovely Christmas presents was a desk calendar of “Forgotten English”, where each day has an old-fashioned phrase (I wonder on which day I’ll find “thank you”?) as well as an “on this date” section. Today’s is “On this date in 1664”, which is notable because Samuel Pepys implied in his diary that if he broke any of his own New Year’s resolutions then he would impose financial penalties on himself. It doesn’t say to whom these fines would be paid though, which in my mind defeats the object: out of one pocket and into the other. He could have donated it to the victims of the plague, I suppose, or the “London fund in case of disasters such as big fires”.
I haven’t really formulated any resolutions yet, and when I awoke three minutes before my alarm went off this morning, hoping that I still had four hours in bed as I grasped to see what time my clock showed, I was in such a grumpy mood that I would have deliberately broken any resolutions just to be spiteful. That would have been pointless of course, just like Samuel Pepys fining himself, but to say I had the hump is an understatement. For the first time in ages I’ve actually managed to sink into a pattern of nine hours sleep each night with relative ease, and it sure is a wrench to have to go back to five or six.
I have just spent the first hour shivering and cursing, willing the sun to rise
and the darkness outside to recede, and for the rain and wind to stop, forgetting
that this is preferable to scraping ice off the car with brittly frozen fingers.
I’ve realised that I don’t need to leave quite so early because the kids have an
extra day off so that us teachers can attend weary meetings and instructional talks
in the name of training. So I have just spent ten minutes slumped at the kitchen
table, which is where my eyes fell upon another present from a Christmas past: a
little book of quotes about teaching, from ancient history to the modern day.
Flicking through, I drank in the quotes chosen to inspire, all about awakening the curiosity of young minds, and the over-reliance of the book on words like “warmth”, “joy”, and the familiar metaphor of nurturing plants. Why don’t I feel the same warmth, joy and green-fingered powers of nurturing? I must admit I’ve started to feel a bit cheated, which doesn’t help the grumpiness. Well, it is an American book after all, so maybe American schools are really these lovely places those quoted would have us believe, and all that stuff I read about metal detectors at school entrances and gang warfare is just a lie fed to our media to make us British teachers feel better about our lot? Huh, we’ll huff to each other after another fiasco in school, at least it’s not as bad as in the States.
Whereas really those
Stateside teachers are laughing over plates of chocolate chip cookies lovingly made
for them by adoring students, and updating class websites with all the lovely work
that their angelic children have produced. There may even be a few rogue elements
tapping out fanciful tales in creative blogging, sponsored by our very own
Department of Education, just in case we surf the web and try to discover the truth: that our own
education system is certainly nothing to be proud of in the worldwide scheme of
things. If it was, would I be so damned miserable about going back to a ramshackle
building in the middle of winter?
added 22/1/05
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