Surviving remote teaching?

So 2021 has begun and it feels a bit like we’re back in the early months of 2020. Which means it’s easy to feel despondent. With this in mind, I thought I’d put fingers to keyboard and note down what I’ve done (so far) to survive and what else I’d feel would help me to survive; partly in a cathartic bloggy-type way and partly in case it’s useful to anyone else.

This year, mainly due to my subscription to Teachers Love Stationary Club, I’ve started a bullet journal. I’m not artistic so am relying heavily on stencils & stickers/washi tape to make it look nice, but I’m giving it a go. I was a little short on inspiration at the start, but thanks to people sharing their ideas and pages I’ve got mine set up. So far this is my favourite page:

I decided that in 2021 I was going to be more positive, so rather than record events I chose to reflect on each day and find a positive in every one. I’ve found this really helpful as everyday I look at this page and see all the positives in the month. It is a real pick me up at the end of a rough day.

I’ve also started walking in the morning. Last lockdown I struggled to exercise in the week. With a 3 year old in the house and trying to master teaching live lessons from day 1, I found myself working quite late so couldn’t do anything in the evening and was getting up later as I was going to sleep later. This time is different. I’m getting up at the same time as if I was going in to work, but at least 3 days a week I walk out the front door at 7:40 as normal and keep walking. Last year I just walked into my office and started working, trying to get on top of the workload, but this year I’m putting me first. I walk for about 30-40 minutes and have found the fresh air gets my head in the right place for the day ahead. It’s also made me realise how much I need time to myself. I definitely didn’t get enough of that in lockdown 1. Those 3 solitary walks a week have helped me clear my head and deal with whatever issues might be taking up too much of my headspace. I’ve also lost 3lbs in 2 weeks which means I’ve made a start on my aim to fit back into the size 12s! On Friday, I moved my walk from around our park & estate to the nearby nature reserve. Best decision I’ve made! This was definitely the pick me up I needed to make it through the final day of a hard week.

And finally is the weekend. There’s only been one full weekend so far in this round of remote teaching. But I made a conscious decision to be just a mummy. This time around I’ve got a 4 year old and he’s getting increasingly aware that things are different and keeps trying to work out why. He’s had some wobbles and wonderful moments through all of this, yet he continues to smile and be happy. I decided I needed to work out how to be more like my son. Last weekend I spent a decent amount of time sat on the floor playing cars and building a train track and we went for a family walk. But I made a conscious effort to let my hair down and was playing silly games and races with him as we walked, even though I was tired and no where near as energetic as he is. And I loved it!

Yet, I am still struggling. Live lessons take a lot of planning. And in this lockdown I’ve noticed that less students are unmuting themselves, preferring instead to use the chat function. I’m really beginning to hate those moments after asking a question: are they typing? Did they not understand? Have they all muted the Meet and have gone back to bed? I’m finding myself pinning myself to the Meet so that I’m at least looking at a human being rather than a sea of black dotted with tiny profile pictures. It’s so isolating and abnormal. I miss the banter of a corridor or a lunch duty and my classroom. My classroom is right by the queue to the canteen so students would often say hi or wave as they walked past. I didn’t realise how happy that made me until it couldn’t happen anymore. Anyhoo… live lessons… they’re hard. And exhausting. Last thing we needed at the start of week 2 was an email saying that there’d be virtual learning walks that week. If they were meant to be supportive and about sharing good practice with the whole school that did not come across in the email. Now, more than ever, SLT need to spell things out like we’re idiots! We’re all exhausted and a lot more is being communicated via email now, so it’s very easy to misinterpret something. So everything needs to be made crystal clear.

Loneliness is also more of a problem this time around. Last time we knew it was coming and were able to set things up. This time, the first Monday was a work-from-home-INSET so we haven’t been together as a school for a month. We didn’t plan anything to keep in touch with each other as we thought we’d be onsite with the y11s followed by the rest of the school. There’s also been no one checking in with us. We’ve been told to call our tutor groups and check in on them, but there’s been no one check in on us, not my Head of Department or an SLT member. And I don’t mean a staff survey or an email, an actual phone call. These are so important. Hearing another voice is so important for our mental well being (why I hate the silence of a live lesson) and it allows those on the other end to, potentially, see / hear through any façade of survival that may exist.

The final one is the hardest one: time away from the screen. Now every teacher is faced with teaching, marking & planning being on a screen. How do we get a screen break? We know that time away from the screen is important, it’s why we’re encouraging students to have a screen break. But how can staff get a screen break? Even making the tutor check in phone calls requires staring at a screen: finding the phone number & then recording the answers to the check in questions. I don’t know if there is an answer to this, but just hearing SLT say they’re trying to find one would be uplifting, I think.

I don’t claim to have the answers but I know what I’ve found helpful and what I still feel like I need help with. And if my Saturday morning ramblings make someone else feel less alone or gives them an idea to help themselves or someone else that’s awesome. But it’s definitely been cathartic after a hectic week.

Here’s to a restful weekend for all and a week that’s better than the last.

No matter how you’re feeling, it’s important to remember that none of us really know what we’re doing in this situation but we’re all trying the best we can. And right now that all we can ask of ourselves.

Dear mummies and daddies…

I’ve blogged a few times about the difficulties I’ve found in balancing my personal and professional life since becoming a mother, but this is a message to all new parents who may be feeling the way I have…

Dear mummies and daddies who are struggling,

You are not alone. You are not failing. You can do this.

These three sentences were ones I desperately needed to hear for over a year, but never heard them.

Some of them were said and some weren’t but either way I never really heard them. The guilt that I was wearing blocked them out. I felt so incredibly guilty about everything: the piles of washing up; the dirty kitchen floor; the unmarked assessments; the poorly planned lessons; not seeing my son enough; not playing with my son enough.

Nothing I did was good enough. I was embarrassed by my continual failures and couldn’t ask for help.

It’s hard being a teacher. It’s hard being a new parent. It’s hard trying to avoid real or perceived mum judgement. And it’s very hard trying to do everything.But it’s ok to struggle. It’s ok to ask for help. It doesn’t make you a failure as a teacher. And, most importantly, it does NOT make you a failure as a parent.

Take a moment and reread that last sentence.

It does NOT make you a failure as a parent.

I’ve been known to describe teaching as “the most wonderful nightmare” in the past. But parenting is the toughest dream-come-true I’ve ever come across. No matter who you are, it’s tough. When you first go back to work it’s tougher. But when you also try to care for countless children and do all the marking and all the admin and all the meetings and all the parents’ evenings and all the…

You get my point.

You have to give yourself a break. I don’t care how organised you are, you cannot do it all. And that’s ok. (No, honestly it really is.) It’s ok if your classes get the stock lesson from the scheme of learning once a fortnight because you don’t have time to customise every lesson for every class any more. It’s ok that you submitted your report data at midday and not 9am that one time as your little one was up all night so you couldn’t mark those last 6 books. And it’s ok if you say no to the “Could you just…” requests because you can’t fit your own job into your life anymore let alone any additional requests.

And it’s also ok if you tell your partner that you need them to watch the baby one Sunday afternoon because you know sacrificing those 3 hours then means you can have an actual Christmas holiday with your family without the marking guilt hovering over your shoulder.

You can do this. You will find a way to make it work for your family.

Don’t get me wrong, mistakes will be made, but remember what we tell our students: mistakes are ok as long as we learn from them and don’t dwell on them.

I’ve just handed my notice in to start a new job just down the road from home (it also happens to be my dream role). Yes I am worried that a two year old will amplify the usual stress of a new job. But as I was being offered the job I started to feel almost euphoric as the guilt I had been carrying lifted. Within moments I found myself relaxed and playing with Oliver in the silly and carefree way I hadn’t done for months. Over the next few days I found I was more patient and much calmer. And I was happier too. I’m not saying that changing jobs is the answer for everyone, but what it made me realise is how harmful the guilt and the blame is. Just how quickly it had invaded my being and, without me realising, it had changed me and my life. And definitely not for the better.

I can’t believe I had been stuck in this vicious cycle for so long.

So, new mummies and daddies, please listen. And I mean truly listen. Let this sink into your soul and start to break the hold of any guilt, any blame and any feelings of failure you may have:

You are not alone. You are not failing. You can do this.

With love, respect and support,

The numpty mummy

Last year I survived; this year… thrive?

I made it through my first school year as a teacher-mummy, although at times I honestly didn’t think that was going to happen. But it was definitely a year about surviving and little else: some books took longer to mark than the policy-stated 2 weeks; some lessons were planned & created during break and taught immediately after; some balls were dropped (some of them even rolled away never to be seen again!)

But I got through it and I learnt a lot of lessons that I am taking in to this year:

How to survive homework.

Homework became a real problem for me. I often fell behind in my marking; my little one sometimes refused to recognise that I had work to do or I was shattered from being overwhelmed. Frequently, I had to hand books back with only part of the class having had their books marked. And even though the classes were really understanding the guilt grew and really started to take its toll.

So, this year I will be using booklets for KS4. I trialled it with a Y11 class last year and it worked well:

• They could peer mark,
• I could mark during lessons,
• I didn’t have to worry about taking 30 books home and having to mark them in time for the next lesson (my son didn’t always play ball with going to sleep on time on the evenings I absolutely had to get my marking finished),
• They liked them (some of them voluntarily told their tutor, who happens to be head of English 👌🏻)
• They were uploaded to the learning platform so students could type, if they wanted, and reprint if they lost them.
• It helped with my organisation as I didn’t forget what I’d set and when the deadline was (a common problem during my first months back. It takes a bloody long time for ‘baby brain’ to go away!)

The kindness of teachers on TES, LitDrive and Twitter can not be underestimated and has made my life so much easier. And taking (and editing for my classes) resources from others has given me back the time to make my own poetry booklet, which I will share once it’s been tested by my classes. And, most importantly, a little more time to spend with my son.

How to survive marking.

All homework will be done on paper. No negotiations! Yes, this will mean sticking in time at the start of lessons. And some books will look scrappy for a few weeks. And some students will stick it in the wrong place, or upside down, or back to front. But if I keep my standards up, they’ll work it out.

Paper is the answer. It’s easier to carry. It means I don’t have the pressure to mark a whole set by a certain period, so any mummy-emergencies which crop up can be dealt with without any ‘teacher-guilt’ creeping in.

I’ve also made DIRT task sheets for my GCSE Literature classes to stick in their books. This speeds up my marking as I don’t end up writing the same response tasks on the majority of mark slips, just a number code.

dirt tasks – higher

dirt-tasks-lower.docx

And my inner teacher-geek leapt to the front in Lidl when I saw a stamp kit. So, after playing with teenytiny letters one evening, I’ve now got a Language marking stamper. Just a quick stamp and a ‘delete as appropriate’ target for each Section B response should reduce the marking time for my largest class.

Obviously, I’ll still add anything else that’s needed, but, hopefully, this will save me a few more minutes.

Even if I only manage to save 5 minutes per class, that’s 40 minutes per fortnight I’ve reclaimed. If I can keep finding ways to make each job at least 5 minutes faster, that’s a lot of time back with my family.

How to survive planning.

Don’t reinvent the wheel! I used to rewrite whole schemes of work (because I enjoyed it and thought that I should) but now I see that as just work for works sake. Or time away from my family. I’m using the prewritten resources without guilt or second thought. A quick pre-read and pre-lesson tweak is all I need to do now. This is so much quicker! And it’s given me time to create some, in my opinion, pretty decent lessons for Y10 lower set poetry, which I’ve shared with the department (so, no teacher guilt for me!) and will upload to TES, once they’ve been pupil-tested.

Go to bed 20 minutes later.

I know it sounds weird, but it’s the best thing I’m doing at the moment.

Because in those 20 minutes, I’m making my lunch or having a shower. I used to squeeze these in in the morning and often end up running late which would create a stressful start to my day. Or worse still, mean I didn’t get to make a cup of tea until break! (Even writing it makes me feel a little stressed out) I’m not getting more sleep, I’m just getting better sleep as I’m not worrying or working out how much I’ve left myself to do in the morning.

Embrace the slow cooker / freezer.

Monday’s are always awful. It’s the first day away from my boy after the weekend. And it’s meeting day, so I’m always late back. Cuddles and play time would often be sacrificed for making dinner. Or I’d play and dinner would be late and Oliver would get hangry! But a decent slow cooker recipe book has helped with that. Set up to finish at dinner time, all that had to be done was put on a pan of rice once I got home. First day back after summer and I got in both cuddle and play time with dinner served on time. I felt like a winner that day! Today was defrosted leftovers reheated and next Monday will be the slow cooker again.

Talk.

This year, I’m going to tell people as soon as I feel it getting harder I start to feel overwhelmed. To often we feel we have to suffer in silence because everyone’s stressed or everyone’s busy. But that’s rubbish!

We work in an profession that takes student wellbeing very seriously. We will bend over backwards to ensure our students can cope, can thrive, can be happy. But we don’t think we should ask for the same things? Madness!

Our heads of department, our line managers, our SLT have a duty of care for us as well. Not only is it in their best interests to help and support us, but they want to (at least all the ones I’ve work with have). But they’re not mind readers. Don’t be afraid to say you can’t cope or that you need someone to help or that you just can’t see how you will meet that deadline. If they know, they can help. And if they help, you feel so much better.

Make time for me.

No matter how much time you can carve out for yourself, do it! You can’t spend your whole life just being mummy or Miss. Or at least I couldn’t. Towards the end of last year, I started to miss myself; I needed time to be me again. So now, every day I take 10 minutes out to learn Portuguese (I’d started before the pregnancy, but hadn’t gotten back in to it) and in a few weeks, I’ll start playing netball again.

I’ve accepted that I’ll probably make an arse of myself on the court: it has been 4 years since I last played. But I’ve been chatting with my new team and it turns out that we all feel the same and we’re all just up for having a giggle and seeing what happens. And if we’re really lucky we may even win a game… hopefully.

I’m only a week in and I have no idea if any of this will keep working, but I’m going to give it my best shot. This year I’m determined to thrive.

I’ve sunk.

No lies.
Cards on the table.
Truth time.

I’m struggling. I’m no longer sinking; I’ve sunk. I’m lying on the bottom of the ocean weighed down by my marking, my planning, the admin, my housework and most of all, my guilt.

I have never been in this position before, at least not to this degree. I’ve suffered the back log of 50 Controlled Assessments needing to be marked on top of everything else and the comeback of daring to have a social life on a weekend and the back log of marking and admin which that creates. But this is different. This time I threw a big ole spanner in the works…

I had a baby.

And now I have new priorities and new drains on my time and energy. I can no longer stay at work until 6 to get everything done. And there’s no way I can dedicate hours in the evenings and weekends to books, essays and power points. Currently, I’m in a position where I need to get the majority of my work done in the 5 hours of non-contact time that I have each week. It’s physically impossible. I simply cannot do it.

I am lost. I don’t know how to solve this problem. And the person I reached out to doesn’t really know either. The solution I’ve been offered is to not worry about marking anything completed before half term. And whilst this is a good short term fix, it does nothing to fix the issue in the long run. Once all of this term’s work is marked more will have been generated; lessons will still need to be planned and resources will still need to be made. Not to mention the reports and emails and mentoring comments.

Logically, I know that I just need to work more. I just need to find the extra hours; these will, most likely, come from the ones assigned to sleeping as I refuse to take them from time with my boy and if I take any more time from my husband I fear I may not have one for much longer (or at least one that I can pick out of a line up!)

But if I do this, am I not adding to the problem? Am I not suggesting to my head of department and head teacher that my work load is suddenly manageable and that I’m coping, when in reality I’m not? I’ve always said that it’s not a good idea to kill yourself marking books specifically for an observation or book audit as it appears that the work load SLT ask of us is manageable when the truth is different: suggesting everything is rosy when it isn’t won’t make things improve. Now, I have to live that on a much larger scale. I don’t want to lose my TLR (and financially, I can’t. We’re already struggling with my husband’s reduced hours and the additional costs. And babies contribute nothing financially. Such spongers!) But equally, I don’t want to stay weighted down on the ocean floor – it’s cold, lonely and very sad down here.

I’m meeting with the head this week and have more meetings coming up about this. And I have to be honest. I have to explain that I will catch up – that was always my plan – but I need a long term solution as otherwise this will just keep happening. And that has got to be a flaw in the system. Doesn’t it? I cannot be the only new mother who struggles with full time teaching. Heck, I cannot be the only human being who struggles with full time teaching. The system where we all merrily work for free in evenings, weekends and holidays has to stop being the norm. It has to start to be recognised for what it is: the system is broken. The problem is, it was this way when we started so we never really realised what we were doing. It just appeared to be normal and necessary so we never questioned it. However, a few years ago I tentatively raised my hand and whispered a question at the system. I wondered if this was the right way to do things. I started to try different ways to speed up my marking and planning; ways to claw back a few more hours for ‘me time’. But now, I’m yelling. I’m stamping my feet and screaming that I need more time; I deserve more time; I’m allowed more time. I’m scrutinising my contract and demanding to know where it says I have to work evenings and weekends for free; where it says I have to choose between time with my husband and time with my mark schemes. And the most comforting thing is that I’m finding a few people raising their hands, both tentatively and vigorously, on Twitter and in person. These past few weeks, where I’ve felt like a failure as a teacher, mother and wife I’ve stalked, and occasionally interacted, on Twitter. I’ve seen people confess to being over loaded, to falling behind, to feeling like they can’t cope. You’ve offered me hope. You’ve made me feel less alone. You’ve made me feel better. So, this is my offering to you: my honesty.

I love teaching. I love my students and I love my subject.
But the system is killing me. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I think about leaving, but I know in my heart that I can’t do it. I love teaching too much. The system may be broken, but I’m right in the heart of this system and I want to see it change for the better; I don’t want to abandon it. I want to help it change, but I’m not sure if I’m strong enough to take that on. I need to find my strength to change it for me at the moment. But if we all find a little bit of strength to say that we need help; to say that we’re struggling; to say that this can’t go on…

Or perhaps it’s not about that right now. Perhaps it’s about solidarity? Maybe the first steps towards a big change are little ones: taking a cup of tea to a colleague who seems stressed? Offering a hug to someone who looks like they need it? Offering a compliment when the teacher in the room next door can’t see how good they are? Or just stopping in to see if they’re alright?

I don’t know… These are just the musings of a tired, struggling, procrastinating teacher.

1 Month in…

It’s the end of September and a perfect time to reflect on this new year. 

I’m not gonna lie, it’s been bloody hard. 

This is my first proper year as a full time teacher mummy and it’s hard. Harder than it was when I returned from maternity leave at Easter last year. Initially I thought it was the summer holiday making me miss time with my little one, but it’s the balance. Not the work / life balance; the teacher / mummy balance. 

For a decade all I focussed on was teaching. My tutor groups and classes were the most important thing. I tweeted, attended TeachMeets and conferences to make myself a better teacher. And because I loved them. But the hours I put in to my work made me feel happy that I was doing the best I could. 

Now I have Oliver and I don’t have the same time. And to be honest, I no longer want to put the same time commitment in. Problem is, I’m still trying to be the same teacher I was. 

It’s a struggle to come to terms with the way things have got to be. It’s the reality that deadlines will be prioritised and those deemed less important may be missed. This weekend, for example I met the UCAS reference deadline (very important), most of the Y11 internal report deadline (moderately important) and less of the Y10/9 putting PGs on the system deadline (less important). And I don’t feel bad about it. I know I’ll do it Monday or Tuesday and, I hope, I have enough of a reliable reputation at my school for those in charge to grant me a grace period while I’m working this whole teacher-mummy thing out. 

But the real problem is the teaching. To make it all work, I have to change the way I plan and teach. A colleague of mine said she taught “50 pence” lessons when she returned after her first child. And I’ve got to try to do that (and here’s the real problem…) without feeling guilty. I still haven’t mastered that and I’m beginning to feel swamped and overwhelmed already. But as I left work yesterday I did feel like I may have a plan to claw my way back. Hopefully…

But, a stressful month back at work has yielded some wonderful moments too. 

I have some amazing classes. My low ability Y9 are such characters and test my low level behaviour strategies. But I love watching their faces as I read Of Mice and Men to them. They’re proper children again captivated by a good story. Honestly, those moments are the best in my day. 

My new Y11 class are amazing and such wonderful people. And I have my old Y9 class in their final GCSE year and it feels like such a privilege to teach them both. 

It’s great being back with my colleagues. To be honest, it’s better now than when I first returned and I felt like an outsider: didn’t know the little anecdotes; in jokes went over my head; new staff I hadn’t formed relationships with. It did feel quite isolating. But I feel like I’m back home again with my department. 

On top of that, I’ve been finding my Twitter voice again and have returned to blogging (although this is more cathartic than edu-blogging). And I’ve got TLT17 next weekend. I love that event and know that it’ll be the reinvigoration I need at the perfect timing. I’ve got plans to go to Ed Fest again this year. 

I think (most days) that I’ll be alright and will end this year having found how to balance out the most important thing in my life with the job that I love. 

New teacher-parent blues

The end of the Easter holidays signifies the start of my first full term after returning from maternity leave (I did 3 weeks before the start of the holidays). 

As expected I struggled in my first weeks back. I found creating a balance between being a good teacher and spending quality time with my little man challenging and much more emotionally painful than I had anticipated. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have been supported by both my department and SLT but there’s only so much they can do. Based on my own experiences the following have been the biggest problems and, if they are nationwide, must be leaving a large amount of exhausted and emotional new mothers struggling and feeling like there is no real solution. 

Isolation

Firstly, I’m still feeding Oliver and it’s important to me that he has a bottle of expressed milk along with his formula bottles whilst I’m at work. And this means I have to express at work. My school was great at giving me options of which room I wanted to use, but it’s much more complicated than that. To keep my body in a routine and prevent mastitis I need to express at a regular time and, as you know, the only regular time teachers have is lunchtime. I’m happy to do this and want to do this for Oliver, but it’s quite isolating. I miss out on the social time with the department. This just makes the other issues seem worse. 

In addition to this, I’ve had a weird experience of feeling like a new member of a department I’ve worked in for 3 years. There are people I don’t know and references I’m unfamiliar with. In my weaker moments these can leave me feeling a little left out. 

Workload 

As expected workload has become a problem. Three weeks in and I’m already behind. It’s so depressing to look at my marking pile up and not see any way of catching up. PPA does not give anyone enough time to get everything done and I’m now choosing to come in later and leave earlier than I used to. Both of these factors mean I’m behind already and can’t see how to catch back up. To make matters worse, I have picked up 6 exam classes so nearly all my marking is equally important and urgent. 

Teacher-guilt

I’ve always felt this in one way or another, but now on top of my standard teacher-guilt is the guilt that comes from knowing that last year I would have put more time in. Or I would have agreed to revision sessions without a second thought. 

I’m no longer the teacher I used to be. And that’s fine because now I’m a mummy and that makes me so happy. But I’ve got to find a way to get closer to the teacher I used to be while still being the mummy I want to be. Problem is, that takes time and, as always, I don’t have enough of that. 

Moaning

I’m finding myself resorting to a default “I’m fine” or avoiding answering if people ask how I’m doing / coping as I don’t want to come across as moaning. This feeling is made worse by the knowledge that everyone is busy and stressed and falling behind in our usual run up to exams chaos. 

Self doubt 

I’ve often had moments where I’ve expected someone to walk into my room and ‘out’ me as a fraud; to be honest I was beginning to learn to ignore them. But having not taught since July (timetable-less in September) this feeling came back with a vengeance. I felt rusty and uncertain about finishing unfamiliar units with unfamiliar classes. But, again, I’m working through that. But it’s the self doubt about being a mother which is most crippling. Especially when I’m also worried about whether I can be a good teacher and a good mother. 
I honestly don’t know if others have felt like this on returning to work or the best ways to solve these problems. But, I know what would have helped ease my return to work:

• A return to work meeting. I have really appreciated all the offers of help, but with everyone being busy and me working in my room the majority of the time, it can feel hard to ask for help or to have time to off load. A scheduled meeting with a LM or SLT member would have made it easier to voice my worries, even if there was nothing that could really be done. 
• A phased return to my timetable. Due to staff absence, I wasn’t able to properly find out where my classes were in the unit or what they were like. It would have been really helpful to have shadowed some of my classes first. Not only would this have allowed me to better get to grips with what I was inheriting, but it would have also given me more planning time. 

I love teaching and I’ve really enjoyed being back in front of my students. And most have been really understanding and patient with me while I’ve tried to find my feet with texts I don’t know and delivering lessons they’ve already been taught. But I still left for Easter exhausted and wondering if teaching was the job that would allow me to be the mummy I want to be. 

In all truth, I do know it’ll end up being ok: I’ll find my new way of working and create a new work / life balance. And the upcoming gained time will help that. I just wish there was a way that I could do that without beating myself up as both a mother and a teacher. 

Developing a reading culture

At the end of last year, I took advantage of my gained time and having a trainee teaching one of my classes to finally  tackle the culture around reading in KS3.

We’ve been using AR for 2 years now and that’s had some impact, but not enough on our really reluctant readers. We’ve also been doing a daily Stop, Drop and Read but that begins to cause more problems than it’s worth!

Problems:

1. Staff are using SDR time to do admin tasks instead of reading.
2. Students who do read are not given the opportunity to enter in to a reading discourse.
3. Some students see SDR and library lessons as painful, pointless and boring.
4. Students only think of English teachers as readers.

Solutions:

1. Clearer guidelines need to be issued to staff and those who join mid-year need to be properly informed about SDR.
   We also need to highlight to staff the benefits to students’ reading ages that the daily SDR offers and the importance of that in their day to day teaching and some students’ ability to fully access their exams.
   There is a wider school issue about workload (which is way above my pay grade to tackle!) We are offering staff 20mins of quiet reading time; a time to just stop and breathe during a, potentially, busy day. However, they see this as an opportunity to make a tiny dent in the never ending to do list.
2. I made mini-review cards for students to fill in. This is a voluntary activity and they are rewarded with house points. In the first month, without any real pushing by staff, both myself and the librarian were pleasantly surprised by, not only, the amount of reviews we were getting but also by who was writing them. We found students who we assumed were reluctant readers asking to fill in review cards and share books they enjoyed with others. These will be displayed next year both in the library and the English corridor and, if I have my way, other places around school too – still desperately trying to prove that reading is not just an English lesson thing!
   The next step is to introduce longer review options, which we will store in a review folder or on FROG (depending on how effectively the FROG champions work this year!).
3. We have students who keep rereading the same book for as long as possible as they can’t be bothered to go to the library to change it. Or those who deliberately wait until SDR to ask to change their book so they can spend as much of the 20 minutes as possible not reading. Although staff are not supposed to let students do anything other than read during SDR time, there are still those who regularly manage to go for a wander. To combat this, we have added reading books to the list of essential equipment that Y7 & 8 tutors need to be checking for and the library is now available for them to use during tutor time to exchange books and quiz.
   I’ve also revamped the library lessons. Our fortnightly sessions used to be split between library and literacy, but with packing, unpacking and moving the class very little of either was achieved. We decided to embed a weekly literacy focus into our lessons and spend the whole lesson on reading and reading / book related activities.
   I am building a bank of reading related tasks for students to choose from which allow them to engage with their book in a variety of different ways and give the reluctant readers a little gap between books, in the hope that it stops reading from feeling monotonous and never ending for them.
   These will be recorded and displayed if appropriate with the students permission and although house points can be awarded, these will not be marked. Their purpose is to allow students to engage with what they’re reading and to promote a reading discourse around the school.
4. A little over a month before the end of the school year, I sent out an email requesting staff who would be willing to volunteer for a Student Recommended Summer Read. I was hoping for a small group of staff from different departments. I was surprised to see my inbox light up continuously for the first 15 minutes after the email was sent. However, I was a little disappointed that all responses were all from female teachers; I was concerned that this would not encourage some of our reluctant male readers. But I quickly learnt that the women in our school respond much quicker to emails than their male counterparts, as slowly  more male names added to my list. By the deadline, I had 44 staff who wanted a book and from a range of departments, including the admin team. With 24 recruits from all ability ranges in Y7 & 8 we met during tutor times to select books. They had the following instructions:
   – Choose a book you’ve read and would like to share.
   – Consider who you’re choosing for.
   – Don’t stitch any member of staff up!
   The books and a mini-review card were distributed and they’re starting to come in. So far  the reviews have been positive (3 or more stars) and a lot of staff have been surprised by their enjoyment of a genre they wouldn’t have necessarily chosen. What I’ve really been pleased by is the amount of staff who want to know who picked their book so that they can thank them and discuss the book.
   We plan to run this again for the Christmas holiday.

 

Our next steps are to bring in an author to work with our reluctant readers and to development parental engagement of the reluctant and weaker readers. However, with the start of my maternity leave looming I’ve left my maternity cover to embed and strengthen the new strategies started last year and the next steps will begin on my return.

Why change can be good.

Being an English teacher at the moment, means that I am in the middle of a LOT of change and it is feeling overwhelming at the moment, regardless of whether or not I like some of the changes. However, there is something that is making me smile and filling me with hope for 2016 / 17: the KS3 curriculum…

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of changes here but if you’re lucky enough to be in the right school with the right people around you it is such a golden opportunity.  During the January INSET we started working on mapping out our KS3 curriculum for next year and, being honest, I was a little worried about whether or not the department would like the vision that I thought would work best for us and our students. Luckily, they jumped on it.

We’re planning to break away from the rigid constraints of each unit being bookended by a holiday, so if there’s an INSET, bank holiday, snow day etc then you have to start looking at what lesson can be ditched. Or you end up rushing through the text (or worse still, not finishing it) and turning our students off reading or associating oncoming holidays with rushed assessments and stressed teachers who suck the fun out of the lessons. We’ve decided on 3 units a year but each unit is going to mimic the project style learning that primaries use. Each unit will have a title that is deliberately vague; each unit will have 2 set assessments; but the rest is down to the class teacher to decide. Each unit will have the opportunity to explore factual and fictional texts / extracts, as well as offering students the chance to practise a range of writing skills, but delivered with a variety that a unit titled ‘Writing to inform, explain & describe’ would often be lacking.

The head of department and myself wanted the team to be able to have opportunities to explore what they’re passionate about in English, as well as what catches the interest of their classes. As well as having time to focus on the skills that their classes need to work on. But we didn’t want them to be constantly counting how many lessons they had left before they would start to feel the pressure of falling behind.

It was heart warming during our INSET meeting to watch the teachers round the table become excited about where the random unit titles that were being thrown out could take them and their future classes. However, I think the excitement may have come from something else, something deeper and, perhaps, subconscious: their professional judgement was being trusted. Myself and the head of department were, essentially, saying to them all that we trust them to know their students, know their subject and to teach to a high standard without being given a prescriptive scheme of work (which, let’s be honest, often gets ignored completely or adapted). We’re not leaving the department high and dry; we are going to create a resource bank that will grow during the curriculum’s life. (I shall share what we’re doing after our next meeting and it moves from draft to confirmed plan.)

I’m not naive, I know that a curriculum map like this could create lazy lesson planning done in a rush the morning before and it could increase the work load to start with, but wouldn’t that happen no matter what we did? I also know that this will need careful monitoring by me to ensure that all students are getting full access to the full spectrum of English, but I’m happy to do that if it means the staff and students are enjoying what they’re doing in their lessons a bit more.

In addition to that, I’m lucky enough to have been invited to join the assessment working group at my school. We’re working together to create our version of levels and the new assessment policy. This is so exciting to me, not just because I’m a teacher geek, but also because everyone who is sat round the table has similar ideas about education: enjoyment, progress and character building are all important and none is more important that the other and we cannot lose focus on that in the new curriculum. These meetings have been some of the best meetings I’ve been in as I feel like we are all working towards a common goal and that our professional judgement and opinions are trusted. As well as seeing the passion in teachers of different ages, subjects and positions genuinely makes me happy. (I know, I’m such a saddo!)

So maybe, in our world of constant change and feeling under valued and undermined by those who are running education, we can and should see KS3 as a light in the dark. A chance for us to trust our colleague’s professional judgements and experiences and create something that we can be really passionate about which will truly benefit those who are lucky enough to enter our classrooms.

How I stopped drowning.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on the worst week of my life which was the most personal blog post I’ve every written, but the events in my personal life have impacted on my professional life in such a huge way. Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘teacher guilt’ and the impact our personal lives have on our professional lives and vice versa and why we often feel we have to suffer in silence.

Back in September I had to take a week off of work, unplanned and badgered into it by a nurse, my husband and my head of department. I wanted to go in on Monday and Tuesday, but was forced not to. And although they were right and I was definitely much better at home, the reason I wanted to spend two days at work was that I wanted to hide behind ‘Miss’. I wanted to avoid being at home and facing the reality of my life at that time; to use my professional life to escape my personal life.

Once I got over the initial panic of returning and having to talk to people and deal with sympathy (don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ungrateful for people’s care and consideration, but at that time I wasn’t ready to say the word ‘miscarriage’ let alone acknowledge that I had experienced one), I quickly fell back into the day to day routine and my role as ‘Miss’ and worked hard to try to catch up on everything I had fallen behind on.

Sadly, the reality of what had happened quickly caught up with me and I found myself suffering from depression: I struggled to get out of bed in the mornings; avoided going home in the evenings; crept straight into bed once I did get home; spent most weekends in bed; avoided people. Needless to say I rapidly fell behind at work.

It is impossible to do all your PPA in your PPA time; we have to work outside of those hours just to keep our heads above water. As I wasn’t in a position to work outside of school I was sinking. I got by for a while just planning lessons and nothing more, but then more things started to collapse and I realised I was drowning. I think that was the darkest moment: feeling like I had failed personally and was now failing professionally.

It took a little while after that realisation to feel strong enough to want to face the challenge of fixing the mess I was in. However, doing it alone proved impossible. More work kept piling up and I kept trying to hide my struggles from myself and those around me. Needless to say that didn’t help and I came to face the reality that I couldn’t come out of this alone. I needed to admit the mess I was in and ask for support.

It’s a horrible feeling when you know you’re in a mess and realise that you have to tell people just how much of a mess you’re in. Speaking to both my head of department and head I was greeted with understanding and compassion. I’ve been offered help and been allowed the time, without any pressure, to get myself back on my feet. I felt instantly better after speaking to both of them and from there felt strong enough to look at the largest To Do pile I’d ever encountered and work my way through it.

During my years in teaching, I’ve found that we can often be too silent when it comes to our own struggles and need for help. Which, to me, seems bizarre as we are in a job where we are caring and compassionate every day and often go out of our way to support or get support for struggling students. It felt very liberating talking to my head  and head of department; dropping the façade of coping took a massive weight off my shoulders allowing me to start finding a way back to myself.

Teaching is fast paced and because of that, it’s so easy to fall behind and the further you fall the harder it is to get back to where we need to be. Throw in the guilt of failing our students and colleagues then it begins to feel like an impossible task. But these past few weeks I’ve learnt that it’s not.

The most important thing I’ve learnt from this and would share with anyone else who feels like they’re falling behind and sinking slowly or rapidly is talk.
Talk to the people who need to know your struggles.
Talk to the people who will listen and support you as a friend.
The key thing is to get it out of your head and into the world. Get it out there and it suddenly seems less scary and less threatening. Speak it out loud and it becomes clearer about how to start finding a solution.

The reality is that the only way to get out of a mess in teaching is often to work your way out, but trying to do that whilst still keeping up with each new day’s work is hard. But it is doable: I’m doing it now. I gave up a day of my holiday to go to school and work undistracted to catch up. I’ve worked smarter: only marked ‘actual’ work; planned lessons with peer and self assessment to stop adding more and more to my to do list; built time into my lessons to give myself time to mark / plan / do admin; said no to additional tasks that I cannot take on properly at the moment.

And even though I’m pushing myself hard at the moment, I feel happier. I feel like I’m on my way to winning.

#misCOURAGE: The Worst Week of my Life

Firstly I want to make it clear that I’m not writing this for sympathy but because I’m still in need of talking / thinking this through and the reality is that this is quite a lonely issue when it really shouldn’t be. So, I’m gladly joining Tommy’s #MisCOURAGE campaign.

In August I got the best news ever: a little + in the window of a Clear Blue pee stick. It was something I’d been waiting to see for 10 months and worried that I may never see when it looked like there may be a problem with my ovulation.

However on 11th September a scan saw my pregnancy was only 4 weeks along when it should have been around 10.

Words cannot explain the emotions that follow such an emotionless phrase: “it’s a non-viable pregnancy”

Holding back my tears caused me physical pain. Once at home I had to go through the trauma of calling another hospital, one with an early pregnancy unit, to discuss my options.

My surgical miscarriage was scheduled for the 16th September (sadly the day before my birthday) and the nurses were so kind. However with only a handful of people who knew I felt so alone.

And to be honest, I still do.

Miscarriage, whether natural or medically induced, seems like our version of Voldemort. Everyone’s scared to say its name out loud. Maybe we’re scared of breaking down? Or making people uncomfortable? Or inviting it into our or our friends’ lives? Who knows, but it leaves those who go through it in pain and without many people to talk to.

I’m lucky to have my husband, who was exactly what I needed when I was in hospital. But I’m scared to talk to him now. I know it’s irrational, but I do feel guilty. Not because I did anything wrong but because it was my body that didn’t do what it was supposed to. And, worse still, I’m terrified that it may happen again or that the problems they were looking into before the pregnancy (and never found an answer to) will turn out to be something real, something serious, something that means it’s unlikely that I’ll have a healthy pregnancy.

I don’t wish to sound melodramatic, and maybe that’s another reason I’m finding it easier to talk to anonymous internet people. The problem is, as well, that I ‘stiff upper lipped’ it when I went back to work so now feel that I can’t break down and let out what’s inside when one of the few who knows asks if I’m OK.

In these past months I’ve found that the pain remains and sneaks up on me. I’ve shed a few tears while I’ve been driving to or from work and I’ve found myself withdrawing from life recently. This past fortnight  I’ve forced myself to go out and although I enjoy myself once I’m with my friends the desire to curl up under my duvet and sleep is very strong. This has also had an impact on my job; once I returned from my week off I had a lot to catch up on, but I didn’t feel the same enthusiasm and passion as I normally did. I struggled to stay focussed during my frees and have found it hard to motivate myself to work once I arrived home. All this has kept me with my head barely above water these past few months. Luckily, once I started drafting this blog post last week I started to feel a bit better and I felt some of my passion return and with it my motivation; I still have an enormous pile of marking to catch up with, but I’m not hiding from it any more. I don’t want to hide from it any more.

And I don’t want to hide from what happened. I want to confront it head on:

I had a miscarriage and I still feel pangs of guilt & sadness about what my body took away from me and my husband.
I am worried that it will happen again.
But I will not live in fear of it happening again.

I will have a family, I just don’t know when yet and that’s OK.