Drifting

Drifting is the perfect word to describe how I'm feeling at the moment.  It's neither here nor there.  Work isn't feeling like an up hill struggle that's for sure, but yet there is something not quite right.  I'm drifting.  It's a strange feeling, I'm getting on with things as and when they need doing and I don't constantly feel like I have a to-do list as long as my arm.  I'm keeping on top of my planning by using TES as much as I possibly can and I'm getting my marking back up to date.  Sounds like I'm totally on top of things doesn't it?  But yet I have this drifting feeling.

Over the last 8 weeks or so I have been determined to strike a work-life balance, something that I hadn't had much of in the first term of my NQT year.  This has certainly had the desired effect on the life side of the balance, I'm claiming back my weekends before it's too late and I allow them to get swallowed up by teaching for the rest of my career.  It's been great, but I can't help but feel like I'm cutting corners to get to this point.  I get that typical teacher guilt, that feeling like I should be working, or that I should be doing something better, more in-depth, more like that other teacher does.  I compare the amount of work I'm doing with other people.  I find myself thinking that so-and-so spends this many hours doing that, why aren't I?  Am I doing it wrong?  Is mine not as good as theirs?   Of course, probably none of this is true.  Are the kids I teach still learning?  Yes.  Are they still making progress?  Yes.  Am I still planning, marking and otherwise doing what the job requires of me?  Yes.

So why the drifting feeling?  One of my theories is that I feel like I'm drifting because I'm just doing what I need to do to get by.  I'm not going above and beyond, I'm not putting all my energy into my planning, I'm not spending more time than absolutely necessary on my marking.  Does this mean my standards are slipping below where they should be?  I don't think so.  Does this make me a bad teacher?  It shouldn't, yet it feels to an extent like it does.

As teachers we are trained to put so much of ourselves into the job all the time, and it's draining.  From day one we learn that planning and marking is going to take over our lives and that we'll be living for the holidays.  Why should it be this way?  As a teacher that arrives at 7.30am and leaves at 5.45pm and often gets the laptop back out between 7.30pm and 9pm am I not entitled to my weekend?  Teachers (and any other profession come to mention it) should feel that the weekend is their time and their time only.  We shouldn't have to make this concerted effort to keep it free or feel like we're dropping our standards if we do.  I'd like to feel satisfied, not just drifting.

What's the solution?  I wish I had a clue.  Answers on a postcard please...

NQT term one survived. Bring on term two.

It's been quite a while since I last blogged, I seem to only be posting about once a half term these days.  I'm just not reading as much as I was before and so don't necessarily feel I have as much to say.  My training posts and the ones from the start of this year were all about the trials and tribulations of starting out in teaching, maybe everything has been a little less dramatic of late?   Jokes aside though, I do wish I was writing more.  Reading, writing and getting involved shall have to be another one of those New Years' Resolutions that never get kept!

When I sit down to think about it now I'm not sure if this term has dragged or flown past.  It doesn't seem like that long ago I was in school putting up my displays and planning the first lessons for classes that I hadn't yet met.  On the other side however, when I think back over everything that has happened since the first week of September, it seems like I've been teaching in this school forever.  I finally feel like I know my classes, I'm getting the hang of school policies and I'm starting to know the names of some of the other staff (it's a huge school, I've got no chance!)

I'm not going to pretend that things haven't been difficult and that I haven't got a long way to go.  Anyone that has read my previous posts will know that's not true.  I'm still working on addressing the balance between working and having a life.  I know it's hard but I am now starting to think it's actually possible, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.  I'm very lucky to be part of a really friendly and helpful department and even luckier, I feel, to have two other NQTs in the department to rant to at the end of the day or share last minute resources with in the mornings.  We share best practice as a department regularly and I'm feeling more able to integrate new ideas into my lessons.  Of late I've been reminded of the basics that I've put to the back of my mind.  It was all too easy in the middle of this term to forget things that were a natural part of lesson planning last year just to make planning quicker and easier.   That makes another thing to add to my list of resolutions!  All this aside I'm really pleased with my first term report, I've had positive observations from my mentor and the NQT tutor and there are plenty of things to celebrate.  As per usual I'm just highly critical of myself.

To address one of the forgotten basics I have created a progress and reflection board.  Inspired by a display shared by the MFL Resources forum I have a series of challenge cards that can be used to check progress and a progress line for students to put their names on and move during a lesson.  I've not begun to use it yet but I'm hoping once I've integrated it into routine and adapted some of my teaching (or returned to some of my old practice) it will start to have an impact.

My theory is that after the initial shock of this first term I can start to build things up again.  I know I need to take things a step at a time and not bite off more than I can chew - as I tend to do - but, in reference to an earlier post, I think it's another step to getting my teaching mojo back.

Talking of biting off more than I can chew... my current project is writing my personal statement for my MA application.  I'm hoping to study MA Education at the Institute of Education.  I have 60 Masters level credits from my PGCE already so I should be able to study 2 modules and a dissertation.  The MA is something I've been thinking about for a long time, and something I know will widen my opportunities for the future.  As well as this, the research parts of the PGCE, blogging, twitter and events like ResearchEd have really got me interested in education as an area of study.  I know that this isn't exactly going to help my attempt to readdress the balance between working and relaxing but for me I feel that it's a step in the right direction.

Is the mojo making a comeback?

During the half term break I posted about feeling like I had lost my 'mojo' for teaching over the first 8 weeks of the year.  I had an immense response from NQTs, trainees and experienced teachers echoing my sentiments and giving words of support/advice.  The post was shared on the TES website (see link on 'My Writing Elsewhere' page) and got even more comments, this time from people I don't know at all.  I really appreciated it and am so pleased to see that something that I wrote for my own ends, to make myself feel better and get things straight in my own head has struck a chord with so many people.  That said, I'm not sure that in itself that is a good thing, should so many people be feeling this way about the profession?  Thats a whole debate in itself I'm sure.  Despite this, I still don't claim to write the views of all NQTs, maybe not even the majority.  This blog is, as it always has been, my space to let out my thoughts and if others read it and get something from it, that's all the better.

So, what did I do about the lack of mojo?  First I took some time off, I didn't touch anything related to school for the first weekend of the holiday and I made plans that would take me away from the computer from Friday night until Sunday afternoon of the weekend before the return to school.  This left me with the week days which I balanced between seeing friends and family and planning.  My aim was to plan all my lessons for the first week back and to have a clear picture of where I was heading for the rest of the half term, something I had struggled to do previously.  Moving to a new school with new schemes of work, classes, policies and procedures had meant that I wasn't able to be as prepared as I would have liked to have been before September.  Now that I've settled into the school and have half an idea of how things worked it was easier to plan for the half term.  I've not done this in spectacular detail, but enough to help me know where I'm headed.

When I was planning my lessons I reminded myself of the sorts of activities I used to include during my training, the sorts of things I enjoyed delivering and that the students were engaged with.  I spent quite some time taking templates for quizzes and other tools from the TES to replace the things I lost when I moved from using Notebook to PowerPoint.  Whilst taking lessons from the TES, why reinvent the wheel when there are excellent MFL lessons out there already?, I adapted them and added my own stamp to them.  The lessons that I planned felt like they were mine again and I was more enthusiastic to teach them.

I got things into perspective, thought about what had to be done and when.  I reminded myself of something I had learned during the last parts of my training year - you'll never do it all.  I will never be on top of a to-do list again, and I have to realise that it's ok!  I emailed a few people about things outside my department that I'd like to get involved in, things that whilst being work related would be enjoyable for me and remind me of the parts of school life that I went into teaching for in the first place.

Clearly I wasn't expecting a miracle cure. I knew that just getting it all off of my chest and changing the way I approached some things wasn't going to solve all my issues, but it certainly helped.  I didn't start the half term with thoughts of leaving and I've still not counted the teaching days left until Christmas (although I've been informed it's 20-something?).  I'm feeling better.  I wouldn't go as far as to say that the mojo is back and we're only a week in, I'm under no illusions, things will get hard again.  However, I've had a long week with a parents evening, some stressful days with behaviour and marking and the knowledge of a collection of data deadlines coming up and I'm not feeling like I want to jump ship.  That's an improvement, right?

I've got my next NQT observation coming up on the 19th, I don't imagine I'll blog before then but I'm sure I'll be turning to twitter for advice.  Looking forward to hearing from other NQTs about their mojo and how they're getting it back.

Getting my teaching 'mojo' back.

If I had been asked over the last few weeks if I loved my job I'd have said no.  If you'd have asked me if I was enjoying it I'd have said no.  If you'd have asked me if I saw myself staying in teaching past my NQT year I'd have almost certainly have said no.  Like many NQTs I was struggling my way through the last two weeks of a long half term and I just couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.  My worry wasn't that I couldn't do it all but more that I didn't have the motivation to want to do it.  I came into teaching because it was something I wanted to try, something I thought I might enjoy and not because it was all I'd ever wanted to do.  I'd lost my enthusiasm for teaching and all I was seeing were the piles of marking, the report data to be entered, the detention slips to fill out both in paper form and online and the emails to field about various members of my form group.

As an NQT it's very easy to get bogged down in everything that is expected of you and not see past it.    I set myself time limits in the evening and don't allow myself to work all weekend because I know that working myself into the ground isn't the way to go.  Maybe it's because of this that I haven't been able to feel on top of things, but even if I worked all the hours possible I'd still not be on top and added to that I'd feel awful too.  I can see how NQTs and more experienced teachers can run themselves into the ground with work, especially if teaching is all you can ever see yourself doing.  You want to feel like you're doing a good job, that you're achieving something and succeeding.  I'm gradually coming to the realisation that as a teacher that's not something I'm necessarily going to feel.  There isn't the feeling that I can work all evening but have something to show for it, the hours of work are put in just to get from day to day and that's something that I'll maybe have to accept.

For me, the major problem with this is that I have found that I don't have time to plan the sorts of lessons that I can be proud of.  I find that I am just getting by with planning lessons that are just OK most of the time so that I can get it all done.  This has a knock on effect as I don't enjoy teaching those lessons as much as I used to when I had planned something a little different, something with a variety of activities and something which the kids enjoyed more as well.  My classroom gives away the fact that I like to use lots of different resources and have things going on, my walls are covered with colourful displays and I like to experiment with different resources - I'm dangerous walking down the kids party aisle or going to a pound shop!  Any trace of these things had disappeared from my lessons of late and I was resorting to text book exercises and the like.  This isn't the teacher I saw myself being, and for my sake as much as the students I teach I wasn't willing to let this happen.

Over the last week or so I have taken some time to reflect on how I'm feeling about teaching and where I see myself in the future.  Right now I honestly don't know where I'm headed in the long term, I just know that for now I need my teaching 'mojo' back.  I need a kick start and another injection of enthusiasm.  I recognise that year 8 and 9 are my stumbling block and I need to find ways of enjoying these lessons more, this will probably start with being tougher on behaviour.  I've been given support with one particular class but I know I have a way to go with this.  Some of this is having new behaviour policies to get my head round and the accompanying paperwork which does nothing to help the situation and just makes setting detentions or removing students from class more of a hinderance than a help at times.  In contrast to this I know how much I enjoy teaching year 7 and year 10-13.  I know that these are the lessons where I can really experiment with activities and which give me something to stick my teeth into.  

This half term, as well as resting, I am going to use the opportunity to have a real think about what is coming up this half term and how I am going to balance the mediocre lessons with the ones that I can be more proud of.  

Added to this I aim to blog more.  Although this may not seem like a logical step for someone that is trying to cut down on work and use her time better I really enjoy writing and want to be able to get more involved in the ever expanding community online.  I think that continuing to blog will remind me of the things that I enjoy about teaching and why I find education so interesting.  Part of me regrets my decision to step back from NQT chat as this was a fantastic way in, but I wasn't able to give the time to it that I wanted to.  Once I get my hands on a project I like to make a real go of it, as much as this can be a great thing it's also dangerous for me as I'll dedicate everything I can to it.  

After attending ResearchEd in September and reminding myself of one of the things that I enjoy about teaching a Masters in Education is still on the horizon.  I've quizzed the Twitter community on how managable this is and with the opportunities for distance learning are around I don't see why I shouldn't give it a go come July/September.  I don't know where this Masters could take me but again, if it is something that continues to expand my ideas about teaching and education and remind me of the reasons I do what I do then it can't be a bad thing.

Excuse me whilst I open my planner, spread my schemes of work across the desk and leaf through a text book whilst I wait for amazon to deliver my latest education related book, I think it's time to get my teaching mojo back.

Trying to keep all the plates spinning.

Teaching seems to me to be one big balancing act.  At the moment I'm trying to keep all the plates spinning and it's less a matter of if one is going to fall but when.  There's the planning, the marking, the following up on homework and behaviour, the new staff induction meetings, the NQT meetings, the tutor group and all the mini spinning plates they bring with them and then of course there is the endless amounts of paperwork and emails.   Oh and the data and reporting that has already started, don't forget that.  Before I continue, I want to make it very clear that I am being well supported by my school, department and mentor and this is not a reflection on them, just an observation on teaching in general.

At the end of my training and the very start of this year I'd convinced myself that 'it gets better' 'the workload will get smaller' 'you'll have your life back eventually' but I'm becoming quite aware that this probably isn't the case.

I'm an organised person, everything has it's place and time and I like to keep on top of things, but that's just not possible anymore.  I was talking to another NQT in my department the other day and we spoke about just trying to keep our heads above water.  It's no longer about being on top of things but just trying to do enough to get by.  This is with my 10% reduced NQT timetable, the free time is meant to be used for observation and development but at the moment I need that time to get everything else done.  I'd love to be out and about in school seeing and doing more, I'd like to feel like I'm teaching good lessons not ones that are just about good enough, I'd like to feel like I'm achieving something rather than just getting by.  Unfortunately all of these things require time, more time than it's possible to give.

I'm assuming that this is a common NQT feeling, but what concerns me more is that it may be something that teachers are feeling further down the line.  Is this something that goes away or do all teachers feel this inadequate?  

All through my training I was determined that I would never be part of that statistic, you know the one, the one that's always quoted about the amount of teachers leaving the profession within the first five years.  I was convinced that I would leave my training year fully prepared for this and the fact that I was so organised was going to help me.  It would seem that I was wrong, over-optimistic and perhaps naieve. I'd decided that the people forming that statistic weren't prepared, they didn't really want to teach, maybe they went into it for the wrong reasons.  It wouldn't happen to me.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to become part of that statistic yet.  I'm determined to see out my NQT year and see where things take me.  There are days that none of this matters because someone in my form has done something brilliant, or something really clicks in class, or I actually manage to leave school at a decent time and go home smiling.  I just wonder how sustainable this sort of workload is.  I don't know how people do it, being 23, single and living with my parents I don't have commitments outside of school.  I can give as much time to it as I need / want to.  How do other people do it?  Surely something has to give?

I realise that I'll just have to accept that this is the way things are, that I can't be on top of everything and that's the way things go.  It's the reality for thousands of people every day.  I just can't help but wonder if things have to be this way?  Everyone talks of reducing the workload and pressure on teachers, but how do we go about this?

(To confirm, before anyone makes comment, I know that this sort of work load is common across many professions, working long hours and trying to strike that balance and many people don't manage it, this post is just a reflection on my feelings on the situation in teaching.)

NQT year resolutions

Typically New Years resolutions are made at the very beginning of the year but I've decided to make my NQT year resolutions a little bit into the term, only a week or so, to give me an idea of the sort of challenges I'm going to face. In true New Years resolution style they are unlikely to stick and probably unrealistic!

Having been in school and teaching for 7.5 days, my resolutions are as follows:

1) I WILL have a life! I will only do the work that I have to do, by which I mean if it doesn't actually need doing I won't be doing it.  Teachers are notorious for doing much more work than strictly necessary and losing all sense of a work/life balance. I am determined that I will be able to have some evenings/weekend days off without that guilty feeling.

2) I will socialise with people that aren't teachers and keep a sense of reality. We all know that if you spend too much time around people that have the same complaints and problems you can end up driving each other mad and making the situation worse.  It's important to have that outside perspective on the situation as well as talking about other things.

3) I will speak out when I need help. Be it in school or on twitter I won't let myself get bogged down with something that could probably be quickly solved by asking the right questions.

4) I won't panic about my lessons not being as thoroughly planned and detailed as they were during my training year.  I've heard enough times now that NQTs shouldn't expect their lessons to be the same as they were.  The timetable load is higher, I have a needy year 7 form, I have more meetings to go to, I have break duty to do, I'm teaching more exam classes - including sixth form. As long as I'm still planning lessons it doesn't matter that I've not got a sheet of paper that tells me exactly what AfL I'm doing and for how many minutes.

5) I will keep up my blog.  This blog gives me a chance to make sense of things that have happened and think about what comes next. I think it's important that I carry it on, whether or not people are reading it!

6) I will join in with #NQTChat. Even though I've given up my commitment to @NQTUK to prioritize other things I will join in with it where I can. It's a really good resource and a lot of fun.  Sharing with other NQTs has been really useful so far so I need to remember this and keep joining in.

I'll come back to these in July and see how they went.  Don't get me wrong, I realise they're not exactly realistic but I'm aiming high!