done and dusted

It's over. And WHAT a relief that is. I can admit it now: I didn't like being a teacher. It wasn't for me. And now I've got a new job doing what I used to do... and I can finally admit I'm not cut out for being a teacher.

If nothing else, the last two years have made me appreciate what I had before. I was well-suited to my previous career, and I'm SO pleased that I will be returning.

Phew.

Giving Up

I'm currently doing one-to-one tuition full time via an agency, at a small high school that I quite like.

But the first week of term was horrible - I was permanently anxious. My main worry seemed to be that although I may be safe for now, at some point I was going to have to return to proper classroom teaching.

And then two things happened:

1) One of the supply agencies rang and told me about a full time teaching vacancy, to start asap. At a school with a dodgy reputation. I tried to say it was too far away (it wasn't), but they saw through that oen straight away, were really pushy, and next thing I knew they were sending my CV off. The very idea terrified me.

2) I discovered that another NQT in a very similar situation... bullied out of her previous school and currently doing full time one-to-one... had been given some classes to teach by the school she was one-to-one-ing at. That also terrified me.

Underneath all this was the constant underlying terror of what would happen when the one-to-one work dried up and I was back to being a bog-standard supply teacher, which would mean waiting for the phonecall from 7.30 every morning and never know if or when you might be working, and where the hell they might send you next.

Maybe it would be better if I'd ever actually done the supply teaching thing. But I never have - I went straight from waiting for the call at 7.30am every morning to getting the full time one-to-one gig. I've only ever experienced the dread of it - not the actual thing itself.

I started to dream about other things I might be doing... and realised that [i]anything[/i] feels preferable at the moment. Which is ridiculous.

So I've started applying for bog-standard office work, and I've registered with a non-education temping agency, and I'm looking into going back into my previous career. I tried my ex employer but they were too worried about my skills being out of date to take me back on. So I'm doing some work on brushing my skills back up again, and I hope very soon to remove myself from the books of the supply agencies.

Sadly I'm even struggling with the one-to-one work at the moment. This is a shame, because it's actually very easy, it's short hours, it's even enjoyable at times, and I could get at least another four weeks' work out of it. But I can't relax. Now that I've decided I want to give up teaching, I don't like being in a school environment. I don't like being reminded of (a) all the things I'm rubbish at, and (b) (paradoxically) all the things I'll miss.

Also I have to keep all this to myself, so when the well-meaning head of maths talks to me about my future career, I have to play along, just in case I can't find work doign anything else or I have a change of heart. I don't want to burn my bridges.

I'm still, for instance, registering with a private tuition agency. Mainly for the money, but also to keep my hand in. I haven't ruled out A level teaching, so if I can get some A level tuition that will help with that part of my CV.

And there's a job that's just come up... at a nice independent grammar school with a sixth form... small class sizes... not starting til January...

Ironically now that I'm making serious moves to get work in my previous career (I'm now registered with several relevant agencies, my CV is being circulated and I already have a potential employer interested), I feel more confident to apply for a teaching job. If I get a different job starting soon, then my January I'll have a couple of months' different, more successful, experience under my belt and I'll (hopefully) know that I don't [i]have[/i] to be teacher. My self confidence might have rallied a little, and the pressure will be off because I only have to do another two NQT terms and then I could go back to the other career.

It's just so annoying to think I might have gone through two years of hell and have nothing to show for it. If I could only get that NQT pass under my belt.

Whatever. I know that for the moment I don't want to go anywhere near a classroom, and I'm taking positive steps to remove myself... and that feels good.

After all, I can now admit that I never really enjoyed teaching. I felt like I ought to, and like maybe one day I might start to, but I never actually did. And although it is supposed to get easier with time, when I think about my colleagues at my last place... there were days when they all looked half-dead. And that included the good ones, the experienced ones, the outstanding ones and the ones who claimed to love their jobs. And it's only going to get worse under the Tories. And I still have another two NQT terms to go, with all the grading and the observing and the judging and the constant fear that it will happen again - that I'll think I'm doign all right and then they'll turn aroudn at the end of term and tell me I'm shit. The very worry that it might happen will make it more likely to happen, because of the effect that it has on my confidence.

Nah. Not for me. Not just now, anyway.

My Body... my Boss

The last time I had a mini-meltdown it turned out my hormones were doing their cyclical thang. This time it was a lack of exercise.

Even though it makes sense, it still surprises me when I react so definitely to a break in the exercise routine. I was doing agency work in a location 11 miles away which meant a 22-mile round cycle trip every day (I know I said 18, but then I measured it)... and then I wasn't... and then I was depressed. Then yesterday I went on a 40-mile cycle ride... and today 25 miles... and suddenly I'm all cheered up again.

Doh.

Fermat's Last Chocolate

Somebody should write a book / short story with this title.

That is all.

snapshots

The problem with blogs is that they are always represented by your last post, which is only ever a small shapshot in time. I was feeling crap when I wrote the last post. Since then I have felt better, worse, better, worse, etc. I would love to document everything that's happened, but it's time consuming and not always helpful - not when it encourages me to wallow. Luckily not many people are reading anyway, so there shouldn't be any pressure (why do I feel pressure? ridiculous girl). Well anyway, just saying. I'm fine, but I'm not sure when / whether I'll next post anything.

Humil

Humiliated is what I am. I've passed the forty mark, I'm supposed to be a grownup. By now I should know what I'm doing, should be capable, should be assured and accomplished and the kind of person you could look up to. For a while there in my 30s, I sort of thought I was.

Yet here I am, in a profession full of young people breezing through and looking confused when I try and describe the reasons I find this difficult. Being judged by people so much younger than me as "Inadequate", being told that I am in danger of being a "drain on resources", that I am "failing the kids and the school" and that I'd be better off contemplating some other career.

Humiliating. Embarrassing. Soul-destroying.

And suddenly all those skills and attributes I thought I had... gone.

Esteem

We're not even halfway through the summer holidays, but already I feel them slipping out of my reach and am starting to panic about how little time is left.

I don't even know if / when I will next be teaching. I'm registered with a supply agency but I haven't heard anything yet.

There are so many levels of uncertainty:

Will I get long-term supply work? If I spend a whole term in the same school, then it will count towards my NQT year. I also have this faint hope that when schools do the NQT rigmarole with supply teachers, they're really not that bothered, and just rubber-stamp you through.

As the above paragraph implies, I have little faith in my ability to pass the NQT stuff, hence hoping for schools that are looking in the other direction. My confidence in my teaching ability was already low, but has got worse since I made such a cock-up of that last job interview. I was really REALLY bad. Will I even be able to teach? Will I walk into a classroom, last five minutes and then run away screaming? The closer the Autumn term gets, the more the doubts creep in: Should I just give up now? Am I really cut out for this?

Can I cope with short term supply? I was theoretically registered for this last term. For a few weeks, I jumped whenever the phone rang. I had to be ready for work at 7.30 every day, just in case. I was constantly terrified that I was about to be summoned to a terrible school full of terrifying kids hell bent on ruining the supply teacher's day. One morning I got a call at 10.30am, asking me to go to a well-known Scary School. I told them it would take me an hour and a half to get there. That was no use to them, thank God. But after that I was even more nervous. I had thought that by 10.30am you must surely know you're safe for the day.

I'm not sure I can teach in stable environment where I teach the same kids every day and build up relationships with them. I'm even less certain about my ability to walk into a room full of strange kids, in the role of Fall Guy, and somehow magically tame them. If this is what I end up having to do, it may finish me off. Of course, if I could stick it out then it would be great experience and would force me to learn tons of classroom management skills really fast... but I'd really rather not. If it's all the same to you.

I have this feeling that if only I could get all my resources in order, so that I could find everything I've ever done and every piece of advice anyone's ever given me, for any age group / ability level / mathematical topic... at a moment's notice... then maybe I'd be OK. But I have (my own) children to look after full time during the summer hols, and it's unlikely I'll get this done.

Also...

I've been given so much advice. I've tried so many different strategies. But right now, my overriding feeling is BUT NOTHING EVER WORKS. All the stuff I'm supposed to have learnt has fled my brain, and whenever I try and dredge it up, the little hate-myself voice just pipes up saying stuff like "There's no point, cos nothing you try ever works". I feel overwhelmed with strategies and advice, and unable to pick anything and try it.

It's not about the stuff you do. It's how you do it. If I could pick something and (a) try it with confidence, and (b) keep using it consistently... it would most likely work. But the lack of confidence feeds into the consistency, so that I try something with no self-belief, which means it doesn't work and I give up on it immediately, thereby removing its last chance of ever working.

From somewhere, I have to get some self belief. If you don't believe you can do it, then neither do the kids and that's you, washed up before you've even begun.

But I don't know where I'll be working, whether I'll be working, how I'll be working. And meanwhile the summer melts away and I fail to prepare for... um... what?

Gah.

Overview

It's clear by now that my teaching career is, er, a bit discombobulated. I want to start at the beginning and explain it one bit at a time, but it's worth giving some kind of overview. So you don't make too many assumptions.

So I've added an About Me page here, and you can also see it permanently over there on the sidebar.

Satchels at the Ready

The first two weeks of my PGCE were brilliant. There was a brief sulking period: I'm BRILLIANT at maths and why on EARTH did they make me do a two-week subject booster (never mind that I hadn't studied maths since I graduated two decades ago, duh). But the resentment faded as soon as I realised it meant two whole weeks doing nothing but maths. Hurrah! (seriously: hurrah. I really do love maths) (and not only do I love maths, but I love being a pupil) (maybe this bit deserves its own paragraph).

One of the things that helped me decide to be a teacher was the two days I spent observing the maths department in a local high school. It was old and shabby and I felt utterly at home. My previous life had involved shiny offices and shiny shoes, and I was never entirely comfortable. Here the walls were flaky and the women didn't wear make up and I was transported to the days of my geeky youth. I was happy. Most people don't seem to have positive memories of adolescence or school, but I do. I love to be taught, particularly by an actual teacher who will interact and answer your questions - and that's why I spent most of my school years dreaming of becoming a teacher myself.

So why did it take me twenty years? Because I was told not to trust my dreams. My rosy teenage imaginings involved classes of wide-eyed children soaking every drop of maths that fell from my lips and eagerly asking for more. But as an undergraduate I had friends who were teachers, and they were all miserable. It's nothing like you want it to be, they said. It's all bureaucracy and pressure and miserable proscriptive crap. You'll hate it.

So I didn't do it.

And then here I was, years later, jobless and staring at a recession and wondering what on earth I could do with my life, and there it was. Teaching. I'd never forgotten the childhood dream, and this time I thought my realism would carry me through. I would walk into it with eyes open, knowing the difficulties and the constraints and not expecting too much, but still...

One of my lines at interview, a cynical giz-a-job manoeuvre but nevertheless containing some truth, went something like this: "I was put off teaching 20 years ago by people who said I would hate it. I listened to them, and I don't think I should have done. They hated it, but why should I have to be the same? Why assume failure before I've even tried? There are people who love teaching, and they're the ones who expect the best and don't assume the worst. Why shouldn't I be one of them? I think I can be, and I want to be."

I was proud of that line. They drank it up. It helped me get my first teaching job.

And now?

I talk to people now, and the advice I get varies between two extremes:

1) "Don't be cowed by the people who tell you you're rubbish. You CAN do this. Don't give up. Keep strong."

and

2) "You're clearly not enjoying teaching. Why are you putting yourself through this? Why do you have to keep suffering? Sometimes the strong thing to do is to admit defeat and move on."

There were several points in The Job That Died when I determined to soldier on, and people praised me for my strength. And then I changed my mind, and chucked the job... and people praised me for my strength. Hmm.

There's a chance I've just chosen the wrong career path, and the longer I do it the more I'll fail and be stressed and miserable and have my confidence eroded... so that the longer I stick with it, the more damaged and depressed I'll be when I finally have to give up on it, and the more of my life I'll have wasted. But the longer I stick with it, the harder it is to give up on it, because maybe I can enjoy it and be good at it, and what a waste it would be if I didn't allow myself that opportunity.

[sigh]

But I loved those first two weeks.

Why on earth?

With hindsight it was not only pigheaded of me, it was insane.

I think I wanted to suffer. I'd made a hash of everything else, and I needed punishing. I can't plead ignorance. I had friends who were teachers, I knew what it was like. I even did research and discovered the detail of just how stressful, tiring and traumatic it can be. I knew the drop-out rate. I knew it would be exhausting. And I knew I was in my 40s, had a young family and was still depressed about the previous career I'd cocked up.

But I thought there'd be plenty of jobs. I thought I could be different - be one of the few who enjoyed it.

I had a list of reasons:

1. I'd get to boss people around.
2. I liked the subject and had a degree which had sat dusty on a shelf for the last 20 years.
3. I'd get to perform in front of an audience, all day every day.
4. Kids are cute, energetic and creative. As an ageing husk of a person, I could feed from their youth and vitality.
5. GCSEs are a piece of piss. I could know what I was talking about for the first time in my working life.
6. I could be Socially Useful.
7. I wouldn't be able to skive. There'd be no danger of sitting all day every day in the corner of an office, playing Patience, pretending to work and hating myself for it.
8. There are jobs. People will always need maths teachers.
9. I'm brilliant at teaching stuff to people*.
10. I'd get to go to college and be a student for a year.
11. There's a rigid and detailed training programme. People would tell me what to do and how to do it. Yeah, it'd be difficult but everything would be structured for me. I'd just work hard and do what I was told. Simple.
12. They'd pay for me to do it. They'd even pay childcare.
13. The economy was about to go into meltdown. The funding wouldn't last. I had to do it then, quick, while I still had the chance.
14. I could always get the qualification and then stick it in my back pocket and save it for emergencies. If I didn't like it, I didn't have to keep doing it. It would be two years out of my life. It'd keep me busy, save me having to make decisions for a while.
15. I love telling people how to do stuff.
16. I'd get to boss people about.
17. They would look up to me. They would hang on my every word**.

So I did it. I applied, got the place on a PGCE (teacher training course), packed my satchel and headed off to college, with a song in my heart and a spring in my step, excited and raring to go.

*Ha. That's all I have to say. Ha. And ha again. With a soupcon of bitter self-hatred.

**The "Ha" is not even necessary here. Right?

Arrival

Hello. Nice to be here. I've been thinking about doing this for a while.

Choosing a name was hard. I tried several cliches on the themes of school, teaching, learning, etc - and they were all horrible. I quite liked "Late For School" because we should get it clear from the start: I'm rubbish. I get everything wrong. And I'm also a bit old for this lark. A pun in the title, hurrah! But that name was taken. So I thought of the Miss Is Crying thing, and that has a pun in it too. A rubbish one. Because let's face it, if you're going to use puns they have to be crap or there's no point at all.

But I had a new problem: How would I point out the pun for those that missed it? If I called the blog "Mrs Crying Again" it would just sound naff and people might still miss it. But then Blogger asked me for a display name, and that was that. I am Mrs Crying Again and I write the blog... yeah, yeah, I know. It's a really crap pun.

It didn't happen. Move on.

This is my new motto, as taught to me last night. When you fuck up, when life gives you another swift boot in the nads (I don't have any nads, but this is a metaphor, OK?) (or maybe a simile) (I don't teach English), you just smile, say "It didn't happen" and charge on regardless. My nether regions were assaulted again yesterday. This is normal. I'm a teacher. But a newish one, and my hide hasn't thickened yet. It still hurts.

Yesterday's pain came in the form of a job interview. For teaching posts in the UK (and elsewhere for all I know), these are peculiarly nasty. You have to teach a class of kids you've never met before, you have to tick all the boxes and do all the impossible stuff teachers are supposed to do, and you have to make it look as though all that buzzword bullshit you spouted on your application form was actually true. There's no hiding. It's horrible. But it didn't happen. So that's all right.

Anyway, I'm jumping in halfway through. I should start at the beginning.

All right then. I will.