It's recently been bothering me that I'm one of the laziest teachers I know. It's not
something I've wanted to own up to, but I feel it's time for a confessional tone from
Ranting Teacher.
It's not that I'm lazy in the classroom. I'm certainly not the type of teacher who sits at their desk during a lesson, letting the little buggers get on with it. How else would they feel threatened into working if I wasn't towering over them, sneaking around in non-squeaky shoes, and sweeping down to pounce on note-passing and the furtive unwrapping of chewing gum?
I'm not lazy in my preparation either. I love making resources: worksheets and handouts and games. I am master of the clip-art and the google image search, hunting down the perfect illustration for each topic's worksheet with only a small degree of obsessiveness, even though I know my lovingly created resources will be graffitied upon, torn, screwed up, and destined for recycling before the hour is out.
To my colleagues, I am efficient. It's me they ask about the time and place of meetings, knowing I write them in my planner with anally retentive precision. They admire my filing system, improvised with cardboard boxes bearing the legends of past usage: Tomatoes and Apples. Reports written on time? No problem. Forms filled in by the deadlines? A day before, my friend. Instant recall ability of each lesson's relevance to the National Curriculum? Yep indeedy, with the confidence of the professional bullshitter, of course.
But it has started to strike me that as I run up the stairs each morning, and straight back down again each afternoon, that I am unburdened by the boxes and bags of exercise books that other teachers lug about. This was underlined by a recent conversation with a colleague, where we grumbled about our early starts, share of the housework, lost Sunday afternoons, and so on, compared to the easy and unburdened lives of our respective non-teaching partners.
It suddenly hit me that my colleague was talking about marking books every night of the week, whereas I was referring to the fact that my pottery class (note: name of activity has been changed to preserve anonymity) clashed with my daily dose of TV drama. I didn't admit it of course, but carried on letting my colleague think that I too was referring to book marking, whilst hoping that my thoughts didn't leak out of my brain and start rearranging themselves in picture form around the top of my head.
Following further investigations, I've discovered that another colleague's breakdown
and subsequent revision of contract to part-time status was brought on by reducing the
number of free weekday evenings by one to zero, in order to keep on top of coursework
marking. Yet another colleague takes full advantage of insomnia to mark books in the
wee small hours.
All of which makes me feel incredibly lazy. By the time I get home I've already had at least a twelve hour day, so I'm usually extremely reluctant to do another six hours of work-related stuff. I don't mind hunting down resources or making a worksheet or two, but the thought of rising out of my armchair during peak viewing time to start trying to decipher some of the shite that passes for classwork makes my stomach lurch. I've been there, done that, and almost had the breakdown. Besides, how else am I going to "keep it real" with "da kids" if I can't communicate with them on the simplest level about what's going on in the charts and on The Street? (I'm referring to Corrie here, I'd rather not think about what goes on out on real streets after dark.) Isn't it my duty to make the kids feel included and relevant?
So yes, I feel lazy compared to the slavish dedication of some of my colleagues. But I
don't feel guilty now that I've thought it through. The books get marked, eventually. It's
just a case of varying activities in the classroom so that not every lesson ends up with
written work. And I feel like a more efficient teacher for my evenings of leisurely
pursuits, like pottery and football and operatics. Okay, I'll admit it, we all know I'm
talking about watching TV, don't we?
added 23/5/04
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