A trip to the park

For my new class at my new school, each week ends with a community visit - to a local park, for example.  With my mainstream head on (I can’t quite shake it off!), I wondered about the point of this.  What was the purpose?  How should I phrase the learning objective?  What would the children get out of it?  Shouldn’t we be doing something more academic; some extra maths, perhaps?  Was this all just a bit of a jolly?!  I’ve quickly realised that I have a lot to learn about working in special education and the needs of the children in my class and I have an open mind, so I kept these wonderings to myself.

As my first week drew to a close, our first visit loomed and on Friday afternoon, we boarded the minibus and headed for a park by the estuary in a nearby town.  It was somewhere they had been before so from a new teacher’s point of view, it was a safe option.  The choice had gone down well with the children too, particularly one who - it turned out - lived close to the park and was excited to show us his scout hut and by the car dealerships we would be passing.  He’s something of a ringleader in the class too, so his excitement and approval proved infectious.

It’s a good, modern park with plenty of up-to-date equipment - no tired and rusting swings, seesaws and roundabouts, but a zip-wire and all sorts of climbing apparatus and swinging and spinning contraptions, designed to make a middle-aged teacher like me look ridiculous!  The kids were in their element.  

The effects and the opportunities were remarkable.  These are children who often find the classroom environment and the challenges of curriculum-learning difficult, for whom the pressures of the regular timetable have to be carefully and sensitively managed, whose stresses are frequently on show and whose relationships with each other can be strained.  In the park, they relaxed as they played.  Instinctively, they joined in with each other, supporting, encouraging and joking with each other, and they were happy to make fun of each other and smile and laugh together.  One charming boy smiles a great deal in the classroom but says very little - usually just one-word answers to questions, and often simply, ‘Don’t know’.  As he and I played together on the zip-wire, I noticed his nervousness of a gull perched on top of one of the struts and we joked about how the gull was waiting for his turn!  As we confronted the challenge of a strange standing seesaw, we were able to talk more than we had done before about his interests.

From the play-park, we ventured to the water’s edge where I watched as the children attempted to skim stones then poked and dug among the pebbles and mud to find a crab-claw, a live crab and various rocks that they claimed to be fossils.  It struck me that what they were doing was wonderfully childlike.  Then, as we prepared to return to school, our ringleader - who sometimes has a bit of a swagger and can disregard the more difficult of his classmates - turned to probably the most difficult and, with supreme humility and kindness, said something like, ‘If you walk with me, we can keep looking for another crab-claw.’  It was a really thoughtful and lovely moment.

Back in mainstream, in my previous school, we dealt on a daily basis with the effect on children of the pressures on them, whether from home, from their friendships, from learning difficulties or from the challenge and pace of the curriculum and impending tests.  The mental health of children has become a hot topic of debate in school staffrooms.  With their customary enthusiasm, school leaders and teachers are taking the initiative and trying out their various ideas whilst rightly pointing out that they are untrained to address this significant dimension of teaching and learning.  I remember a one-off, off-timetable day at my previous school when children were introduced to tai-chi and mindfulness activities as strategies to enhance their mental well-being.  The problem was (and is) that the next day, we were all back to the normal timetable with its challenges and pressure and before long, the good intentions and ideas of that great day of well-being were just about forgotten.  

Once they’ve got their heads around the risk assessment and accompanying paperwork, most teachers I know love a trip, whether it’s a one-day visit or a longer residential.  Commonly, we talk of the precious moments on those trips when we saw a different side to a child or got to know each other better and relationships were enhanced.  More common though are the really sad reflections at the end of another frenetic day in the classroom when we realise that there are children in our classes to whom we barely spoke all day.

The problem in mainstream schools is that these opportunities are too contrived and they are too few; above all, rules the academic curriculum, its accompanying regime of tests and the pressures it brings.  Anything else is an aside, to be squeezed in if possible.  The advantage for me and my class is that their well-being ranks alongside those other things - it has to because any academic learning and progress depends on it.  (Surely, the same could be said for children in mainstream schools.)  It isn’t as easy to take a visit like this in a mainstream school, not least because classes are bigger and supervision ratios are tighter.  These opportunities are important for children though and they ought to be given greater value in schools, even if it means using that trim-trail more often, being imaginative about how to use the school field, the outdoors classroom or that patch of woody scrubland, or walking the class down to the local rec., to the beach or into the woods.

The doubts I had about the importance of our community visit are gone.  The childlike scavenging in the waterside mud was the best example of mindfulness activity I have ever seen; the thoughtful kindness the boys showed each other was simply natural and it was wonderful; we all know each other better; and their playfulness was good for the soul - mine as much as theirs.  I’m looking forward to our next visit.  

Pause

‘Career pause’ is a phrase I read in an edition of the TES not long ago.  At least, I think it is!  It was something like that.  As far as I recall, it referred to teachers having some time out and the reasons for why they might need it.  It was a positive thing – an opportunity to reflect, to take stock.  It was an alternative to the burn-out or meltdown that too many teachers experience instead.

At the time of reading that feature, it didn’t register with me in any significant way.  I didn’t think it had, anyway.  I don’t remember too much of what I read in the TES though and that phrase somehow stuck with me when others don’t, so maybe – on some unconscious level – it meant more to me than I realised.  On the other hand, I may be misrepresenting whatever article it was that I read and just making this up to help justify what I’ve been doing!

When I left my previous school in July, it wasn’t to have a ‘career pause’; it was to get away from a place that had done me more harm than good.  I didn’t really know what I was going to do with myself.  I told people I would supply-teach for a while and look for another leadership role, ideally for January.  I wasn’t really convinced it was what I wanted or needed, but I think it reassured others who were anxious about what I would be doing and where the money was going to come from.

Briefly, I must digress and clarify that my last school wasn’t all harm; there was good.  I’m a positive and optimistic person so I can look back on my four years there and know with certainty that I got a lot out of my time there, I learnt a lot and I developed as a teacher and a school leader.  Sadly though, there was too much there that was wrong and I couldn’t do very much about it.  It grew harder for me to remain positive and optimistic and I was becoming unwell.  As I told the staff on my last day there, I couldn’t be myself so leaving was the right thing to do.

As always the summer holiday was wonderful, then September came around too quickly and my friends returned to their various schools whilst my summer holiday dragged on by another (annoyingly grey and rainy) week, and then another.  My ‘career pause’ had begun and I reveled in the opportunity to watch as much ‘Bargain Hunt’ as I wanted!

It wasn’t long before frustration crept in and I started to miss school.  I started to miss the business of simply working, I missed the hustle and bustle, I missed children – their brilliant, various and changing personalities –  and I missed the people.  Inevitably, an awareness – if not anxiety – about needing to earn money also began to grow.

Thankfully, my first stints as a supply teacher followed surprisingly quickly – in the third week of the new school year – and I grasped them eagerly.  It was money, it was stimulation and activity and I wasn’t sure what I could do other than teach or brave enough to explore other options.  Or maybe, in spite of everything I’ve been through in recent years, that teacherly spark that I sensed all those years ago that first took me into the profession still burns somewhere deep down inside of me and I can’t help but be drawn back to the classroom.  It occurred to me too that it might be interesting to see what is happening in other schools.  Demands on schools have grown and things have changed – big things like the curriculum, tests and assessment – so how are different schools responding to that?  It’s not something I had  been encouraged to consider or explore for a long time.  I was right: it was interesting.  And I enjoyed it.

Also quickly, came the suggestion that I do some regular, part-time work in special education.  I didn’t hesitate to say yes – more work, more money!  Again though, it soon occurred to me that it could be interesting experience; for a couple of terms, I’d covered as SENDCO, which had been interesting, and this could be an opportunity to build on that experience.  Moreover, wherever I decided to go next in my career, deeper understanding and experience of special education could surely only be valuable experience.

And so it has proved.  I spent one week effectively getting to know the school, covering teaching assistants in a couple of classes and learning the routines and expectations of the class I would be teaching.  In the second week and third week, I began teaching the class I briefly shared with another teacher.  By the fourth week, I was full-time, in readiness for taking over a different class on a full-time basis from after half term and for the rest of this school year.  It wasn’t what I had in mind when I began my ‘career pause’ and it still surprises me to find myself here; however, it has been endlessly fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable and I am excited about taking on my new class.  Even in these few weeks, there have been genuinely revelatory moments that will stick with me for the rest of my career.  It’s a while since I have felt that excitement and I am so glad for it.

I wonder now, does this really qualify as a ‘career pause’?  My spell away from the classroom – away from schools – was brief, but it was a pause nonetheless and it was sufficient for me to realise that I wanted to work and, most importantly, I wanted to continue working in schools.  Even though, I’m back at work and back in the classroom, this still feels like something of a pause.  I’ve stepped off the trajectory I was on – from teacher to Phase Leader to Deputy Head to Headteacher – and the seemed inevitability of my future has gone, and with it, the pressure to meet other people’s expectations.  I’ve stepped into a different and exciting field of education, which is stimulating, challenging and interesting.  It’s somewhere I didn’t expect to be and I don’t know where it will take me, so there’s something spontaneous and daring about it.  I’m relieved of the responsibilities and pressures I had, but looking forward to new ones and hopeful that this will rekindle my ambition.

Whether you call this a ‘career pause’ or not, it’s been a good thing and I have no regrets.  Perhaps I’ve been fortunate to have been presented with the opportunities that have come my way, or perhaps they were just out there, waiting for me to be in the right place to notice them. 

It’s an enormous sadness to me that too many good teachers and friends are miserable, fearful, stressed and close to burnout or melt-down and too many feel trapped in jobs that are doing them more harm than good and turning them off the profession for which they once had such hope, that has brought them such joy and to which they have dedicated their lives.  I have discovered that there is still hope – it’s not long since I doubted it – so, if you need it, whatever you call it and whatever you do with it, I certainly recommend some sort of ‘career pause’.