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.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 4 August 2011
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.
So I've added an About Me page here, and you can also see it permanently over there on the sidebar.
Sunday, 24 July 2011
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.
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.
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