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Highs and Lows

I read an article the other day about manic depression, and wondered if the author had been describing teaching. With manic depression, apparently the "highs", or euphoric "feeling good" part of the disorder is so phenomenal that it's tempting not to take the prescribed medication, which is there to balance out the "lows" - the miserable state that we normally associate with depression. This medication aims to stop the sufferer swinging between the highs and lows, and instead offers a more steady stream of feelings and moods. Or, as one of the interviewees put it, it makes you feel bland and non-committal about things. You just drift along, never suffering those awful black moods, but similarly never feeling enthusiastic or euphoric about anything.

The scary thing was, that it did sound a lot like the mood swings and emotions that I go through in an average week. Maybe teaching can induce the symptoms of manic depression. Whilst I understand that many people ascribe all types of depression to chemical imbalances in the brain, for many types of depression there are "trigger" events.

But then again, since when did you have to like your job? I can't imagine kids in their careers interviews looking forward to working long hours stacking shelves or sweeping roads or emptying bins or bedpans. Then again, it still bewilders me why careers like dentistry are so highly sought after - all that training for the pleasure of standing on your feet all day fishing about amongst rotting gums and cracked teeth. Still, I'm glad someone does it.

To go into teaching, I opted to leave a safe office job. I didn't think it was what I wanted to do, but boy-oh-boy, if I had known precisely what I was letting myself in for, I'm not sure I would have opted for the manic choice that is teaching.

First of all, there was the teacher training. Almost ten months being a student again seemed like a very attractive offer. Had I ever worked so hard in my life? Resolutely: no! Every weekday was spent either in school or in college lectures and seminars, and on top of planning lessons (which takes forever when you're not quite sure what you're doing and have to consult government guidelines every ten minutes), there was endless form filling, and of course essays and reports to research and write. It was straight into a routine of getting up early, because every school seemed to start even earlier than any office job I'd known, especially if you wanted to use the photocopier or library. Then after school or lectures there were the hours spent making worksheets and researching topics and filling gaps in subject knowledge. Good preparation for teaching proper, in fact! I just managed to get out of marking very much, which may have been the thing to push me over the edge at that time if I'd had to do that too!

However, a bit of hard work never hurts anyone, does it? Well, combine this with the shock that was a modern comprehensive. Every day I was stunned by something that happened: the rudeness, the pushing, the fighting, the complete disregard for rules and instructions and learning opportunities. I didn't go to a comprehensive myself, so even the fact that boys and girls were in the same classroom together was something I had to get used to.

There were good things about the way in which education had changed since my own school days too. Kids didn't sit quietly and copy down paragraphs of writing from the board, or answer the same sorts of question in every lesson. In fact, at first it all seemed a bit flaky: making leaflets or posters, doing projects, giving speeches instead of writing essays. But I soon realised that these methods have their merits too, and were far more engaging than the chalk-and-talk I'd experienced.

In addition to this, though, it was like going through some sort of therapy. I'd never really enjoyed school much myself, and it seemed like a distant memory in some respects. There are whole chunks of school life that I'd never revisited or remembered, but these came bubbling to the surface when I started my teacher training. I realised just how miserable it was at times, and it was difficult when memories would be triggered by something that happened in my teaching practice school. It all started to get me down. Just before the Christmas holidays I considered dropping out, but didn't even have the energy to make that decision. I just left it to fate. I stopped going to the college lectures, and decided that if they wanted to chuck me out, then so be it.

Obviously the college didn't miss my presence at the lectures, or if they did they turned a blind eye: if I dropped out, like five of our group of thirty already had, they would lose the funding that went with me.

But then something strange happened. I developed some coping abilities I never knew I had. It happened bit by bit. Maybe it was a lesson that went really well, or encouraging words from the saint that was my mentor. Maybe the kids stopped scaring me so much, and I ceased feeling I had to be omniscient in front of them. There's a saying, "If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger", and I can think of no better example than this to prove that saying right.

The mood swings weren't manic, but I had gone from lying in my bed to avoid lectures to feeling a real buzz when a lesson went well. I felt relaxed amongst children, instead of viewing them as a completely different species. I thought that maybe I could hack teaching after all. Until my NQT year, that is.

It was only halfway through my PGCE that I discovered that I'd need to do another year actually working as a teacher before I was fully qualified - and only if I jumped through more hoops to prove I was capable of teaching. I hadn't even been sure I wanted to get a teaching job after the PGCE, but this was the news that convinced me I must. I wasn't going to let that bloody hard year all be for nothing.

Job secured, I started at the new school in September, looking forward to having my own classes, teaching in the way I wanted, having some continuity and building relationships. What I didn't expect was the confidence crushing descent into depression that followed. To summarise: condescending colleagues, constant picky observations, bitchy learning support assistants, and two absolutely rotten classes amongst the dregs that seemed to have been scooped my way. Every day my drive into school was fogged by tears. I was working until midnight every night to keep on top of things. Weekends were spent working too. I started to crack up. There was nothing pleasant or satisfying about what I was doing, let alone mildly euphoric. The stress started to manifest itself in physical symptoms: migraines, heart palpitations, digestive disorders. I knew that none of the other people from my teacher training course, wherever their respective schools were, were being observed three times a week, or were expected to produce schemes of work with accompanying handouts overnight, and so I quit as soon as possible.

It was the best thing to do. Without missing a stride, I secured another teaching job and gradually regained my confidence. I even checked my first school's website to see how many of my fellow NQTs were still teaching there after that first year. None. That made me feel better!

Since then, it's not all plain sailing. I still go through the extremes of emotions I have experienced since the start. There's the frustration when something over which I have no control prevents me from doing my job properly. The annoyance when a slack school discipline policy fails to help me with difficult pupils. And those days where everything goes wrong and there's far too much to do, and not enough hours in a lifetime to squeeze in everything; kids lie to you and mess you about and steal your pens and don't listen and don't make the most of their learning opportunities, and won't that be the day that the VCR chews up the department's only copy of a really important tape, and the photocopier's broken down and you needed it desperately because there aren't enough text books to go round... Need I go on?! Then following an evening of marking a sorry selection of books you know you've got to go through it all again tomorrow. You can't cope. You cry. You contemplate a day off sick. You know you couldn't do that to your colleagues - could you? Getting up the next morning is a challenge in itself. Once again, the route to school is blurred by tears. But inevitably, the day isn't as bad since you lowered your expectations.

And then once in a blue moon there's that day where euphoria hits. You bounce around the classroom as class after class give you a chance to do your teaching thing, and some of them even learn stuff, and you remember to keep up the pace of the lesson and to speak to every child at least once, and you handle the troublemakers with just one raised eyebrow, and you could even say that they were eating out of the palm of your hand, if that wasn't such a revolting image.

It is mania, in my opinion. There are many lows, and a few highs, but it's rare to cruise along in neutral. And perhaps it was the neutrality that made me leave the safe environs of an office job. There are many days when I'd welcome the chance to answer phones and fiddle with spreadsheets and check my email every fifteen minutes to relieve the boredom, and also days when I seek out the vacancy board in my local supermarket or consider asking about the "bar staff wanted" poster in the local pub. But somehow I never seem to go through with it... so far! You know me by now - I just rant about the crappy bits instead!

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added 12/4/04