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.