Oh how the mighty have fallen. I can’t even be bothered to find an appropriate quote to go with this blog post, that’s how low I’ve sunk … Isn’t it always the way? You let your guard down for two minutes and the rug gets pulled from underneath you so swiftly.
This is all a very dramatic way of saying that I’ve gotten myself a cold. Not just any old cold though, possibly the most dastardly of all colds I’ve ever had. I felt it on Friday afternoon – on the way home from work on the last day of a v e r y l o n g 10 week Term. Now, considering how deftly I had swatted away all kinds of illness all term long I was, frankly, pissed, to discover that it had finally gotten the better of me in “my own time”. To make matters worse, as someone who doesn’t get sick a whole lot (feminine stoicism I inherited from my mother) when I do get sick, I really get sick (see video below, except, I’m the man).
So, right now, I’m sitting here on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon, with my dog next to me on the lounge, a bunch of snotty tissues and a To Do list the length of my forearm and I’m doing what any sane person would do: I’m procrastinating. So far this has included the following activities:
- Watching Stranger Things 3, back to back, in its ENTIRETY (it’s much better than Stranger Things 2)
- Catching up on the last episode of Orange is the New Black before the new season comes out (in more than two weeks time …)
- Creating BuJo layouts for books I’m going to read this holidays (despite being in a slump that has lasted SEVERAL months)
- Creating To Do lists of all the shit I need to do
- Playing ‘To Be or Not to Be’ (a fun choose-your-own-adventure game based on Hamlet – thanks to my nerdy boyfriend for that one)
- Just generally moping about the place feeling sorry for myself …
I figured if I were to write a blog post, I would at least feel a little bit productive, so I thought I would take a little opportunity to reflect on the term that was. I don’t do this nearly enough – just like my own personal journal keeping – I let details slip and slide and they become hazier over time, until you’re not sure if a story actually belongs to you, or it amused you so much that you borrowed it from someone else. There was a lot of times this term when I didn’t feel like I’d even had the chance to stop and think, let alone reflect on what was going on around me and, suffice to say, it was a rough one. Term Two always seems to be that way: everyone is finally into the swing of things, your classes have settled into the way they’re going to be for the rest of the year (and in some cases, this isn’t always a good thing) and you get hit with the sudden realisation that it’s winter, and even for those of us who like the cold, it’s not always very pleasant. I do, however, take solace in the fact that the ‘first’ Term Two was far more difficult than this one and although this one made me cranky, sweary and a little bit more mean than I would like to be, it didn’t break me down into little pieces. I’m going to call that a win.
I’ve spoken to a couple of non-teacher friends since the school break has started and when I explain to them that, in fact, I do have quite a bit of school work to do during the break they are taken aback – “Why?” they ask, “You’re on holidays, aren’t you?” and I love to laugh sardonically and inform them that for teachers, there is no such thing as school holidays … this is merely a respite from other people’s kids for a couple of weeks. The work still goes on, and there’s a lot of it, and sure, some of this is self-inflicted pain that could have been easily remedied by doing a few extra bits and pieces while it was still Term 2, but all the same, our work is truly never done (furthermore, I’m sure there will be shit that I have forgotten to do come the 22nd of July…)
During a conversation with a teacher friend from another school earlier this term, he mused that “teaching was getting in the way of [his] job” and that’s kind of the way it felt a lot of this term. There was so much paperwork and professional development and meetings to attend that sometimes, teaching got a little bit lost in all of it. So, even though it is holidays, I’m hoping to get as much of the shitty paperwork stuff out of the way early, so that when it comes to Term 3, teaching gets to take priority – after all that’s what I’ve been trained to do.
And I guess that’s a little tidbit to any preservice teachers out there who might happen to be reading this: they never tell you just how much paperwork is involved with all of this. Whilst preparing for my professional experience placements, I was pressed with the urgency of completing lesson plans, down to the minute (only to discover that your 7 minutes allotted to discussion doesn’t mean shit when Year 9 are having a bad day) but not informed about the process of filling out my registers, or the fact that I had to prove I was a ‘proficient teacher’ by the end of my second year (what does that even mean? Well, I didn’t know until I was on the job but here are the standards for Australian teachers) nor had I really fully considered the fact that this job is about SO much more than just teaching kids. It will wear you down if you let it because at the end of the day, you will probably still decide this, as I always do: teaching is worth it.
And that’s the mantra I’ll keep on repeating to myself as I continue to trudge through my extremely long To Do list: teaching is worth it. Of course, I will also tell myself: if you don’t do this crap now, you’re just going to have to do it later and you’re going to hate that even more. But you get the point…
Until next time, be good,
Ms Tracy.
thoughts from the first year 