work....work....work

I've talked a lot about the negative sides of my life so I thought it was important to look at something positive. I must be in a small minority when I say this, but I can say with absolute honesty....I love my job! Although I love the summer holidays, I've been excited for the last week about going back - indeed I was in school for 3 days that I wasn't meant to be just to get started for the new year.

Now, that's not to say I don't get frustrated with work sometimes - as with any job, sometimes things don't run smoothly and you do get stressed and fed up, but overall, I wake up in the morning with a spring in my step, eager to get going.

So, my question is, why do people settle with jobs they don't like? I realise there is a lot of pressure to earn the right income and have the right lifestyle, but I'd rather forgo the large income if it left me feeling utterly despondent every working day of my life. Certainly for the last 18 months I've managed to get by saving £350 a month, and that was before I moved in with my partner.

Let's go back to my job - I'm a school teacher, which is a stressful job. Some people would be concerned that a person who suffers, as I do, with depression would not be able to cope in such a high maintenance environment, but for me, teaching is one of the great things that keeps the serotonin buzzing. I love the feeling that I have made a difference to someone's life and when you're teaching you can get that feeling every single day, as long as you approach the profession with the right attitude - no matter how down or depressed I'm feeling I make sure every lesson I teach is 'fun'. I've put fun in inverted commas, because I don't mean that every lesson is hands on, dirty, extravagant and crazy, but rather I try to promote an interest in the subject being taught whether it be turning fractions into decimals or queen Victoria's love for her husband - if you can pass on some of your own enthusiasm to the children then the learning follows naturally. It always amazes me when education ministers and so called 'experts' try to tell us that if all teachers follow their specific plans and rules then the children are bound to learn and yet no one up there ever seems to realise that it's not what you teach, it's how you teach it - if you are enthusiastic about teaching, your class will be enthusiastic about learning regardless of the topic. One of the things I often find is that a lot of children, and their parents, have a fear of maths that has come from that one teacher who didn't particularly like teaching maths and so made the whole lesson a labour when children move schools to us from somewhere else, so many of them almost feel like 'damaged goods' when it comes to maths; I see my role as, not to teach them, but to get them to enjoy the subject again - learning cannot occur if pupils aren't motivated to learn.

I sometimes feel like my most over used phrase in this blog is "I am lucky because...." but I want to use it again - I am lucky because our Senior Leadership Team are happy as long as the children are happy and successful learners. This allows us some freedom to approach teaching in more interesting ways - I have spent many a lovely afternoon with a class discussing a breaking news story or openly talking about their fears and dreams. We feel comfortable getting to know our children rather than worrying about getting the right results that make the school look good and, while the government made it a teaching cliche, we genuinely feel that every child matters, regardless of their age or ability. That's not to say all schools are like this and once again I do feel lucky to have a found a school that reflects my personal ethos and where I feel comfortable being myself- I am supported and all of the staff are amazing, I feel completely comfortable at work.

So anyway, while many people complain and grumble about their job, mine is both exhausting and exhilarating. People outside of education often mock us for our long holidays, but it's true to say that at the end of a 6 week half term, you need a break and at the end of a full term you could easily sleep for a week. When my non teaching friends get a week of work they don't seem to have the same 5 days of death, exhaustion and recovery that accompanies all teachers on their holidays.

There is one negative thing I can say about my job..... I don't think I could ever become part of the senior team because it means cutting back, or even stopping, actually teaching. I love being in the classroom and I feel like it's something I'm good at so I wouldn't want to give that up to feel as though my career is progressing. I recently chatted to an old Uni friend of mine, who is already a deputy head, but he was saying that he rarely spends time in front of a class and most of his time is spent worrying about being able to afford things and managing people, not to mention the mountains of paperwork. The negative side of teaching is that in order to 'progress' you have to stop doing what you're good at and so many of the best teachers don't spend enough time in a classroom. About ten years ago the Government at the time realised this and introduced a scheme called Advanced Skills Teachers, which had the goal of trying to keep the best teachers in the classroom, while allowing them to move up the payscale, but this was rapidly phased out when the next government took over. The newest scheme is that wages will be based on performance - in the past, after 7 years of teaching you could apply to go through threshold and leap up to a new payscale, but that has been scrapped as of this academic year....which is when I would have been eligible to apply (of course). So now the system is performance based, which on paper would be a good thing, but the cynic in me is well aware that most schools are desperately looking for ways to cut costs and being given the option to NOT increase wages must seem like a godsend! I know my employer won't use this as an excuse to keep wages lower, but it saddens me that many teachers may lose out; I guess if you look at the flip side of this, maybe many teachers were going through threshold that didn't deserve the pay hike and this may help resolve that.....who knows?

I'll leave you with one final note about working with children: children love their teachers unconditionally, they enter each day with adoration in their eyes, they hang off your every word. This can be an enormous boost to your self confidence, as long as you remember that the second the school year is over and they move on to a new teacher, you are merely a person from their past.

I love my job!