Sucked In

Last night, I got sucked into a Twitter debate about the Government’s new times-tables tests for children in year four.  I don’t have a massive objection to a five-minute on-screen test but I question its necessity.  I was surprised and disappointed by so many teachers’ enthusiasm for the announcement. 

On Twitter, secondary teachers were decrying their intakes for not having quick and easy recall of times-tables facts and pointing out the challenges children then have in studying the key stage three and four curriculums.  This is a fair point, and one to which, I know, many year six teachers will relate, having prepared eleven-year-olds with poor knowledge of basic number facts for their SATs.  Rightly, there is consensus that children should know their times-tables. 

My surprise is because a test, in itself, is not a silver bullet that will suddenly make children better at learning their times-tables and I thought this was something that teachers everywhere would agree upon.  That will continue to depend on the quality of teaching, assessment and learning.  Like primary teachers everywhere, I know the importance of times-tables and have devoted many hours with every class I have ever taught to teaching and testing them in all sorts of ways.  I reckon there are plenty of children who will remember taking home the ‘Mr Parker’s Times-Tables Challenge’ trophy!  I have also devoted many hours to beating my head against a wall over a hardcore for whom nothing seemed to work.  Rather than pile more pressure onto teachers in the form of another test, I would rather there was investment in understanding better why some children struggle to learn their times-tables, what teaching strategies are most effective and in resources to support top-quality teaching.  And if secondary colleagues know how to do it, I wish they would tell us!

Some people believe that it is only with a standardised, national test imposed by Government that teachers will really know which children know their times-tables and which do not.  Really?!  As I posted on Twitter myself, either a child knows her times-tables or she doesn’t and seriously, any teacher who can’t assess this and doesn’t know it probably ought to be for the high jump.

I suppose Nick Gibb has a point when he says that the Phonics Check had the effect of improving children’s learning of phonics by forcing it to the top of schools’ priorities and focusing attention, training and resources on the issue.  (Incidentally, he also says that a lot of schools are doing a good job of teaching times-tables begging the question of what those schools are going to gain from his test and, despite his assurance that school-by-school results will not be published, possibly hinting at an agenda to identify those schools that are not doing so well.)  What I don’t understand is why we need him to do this for us.  The ‘new’ curriculum with its requirement for children in year four to know their times-tables isn’t that new anymore and we already knew there were children finishing primary school with poor times-tables recall.  Judging by the comments on Twitter yesterday, secondary teachers certainly knew about it.  So why haven’t we as a profession done something about it?  Why haven’t primary Headteachers and their staff effectively grasped the nettle? And if the Heads of Maths in secondary schools had so much to complain about, why haven’t they been more effective in working with their primary colleagues to address the issue?

My disappointment is because of the apparent division within the teaching profession – the doubt and lack of faith in each other and the criticism (at least implied) of each other’s teaching and assessment skills.  We ought to be better at supporting each other and at standing up for our professionalism.  Assessment is one of the pillars of teaching but whenever we call for another test – whenever we say we need one to check our own assessments – we imply, at best, our lack of confidence in our own assessment and, at worst, our inability to assess accurately.  When we welcome a test as a means of driving up children’s outcomes, we express doubt in each other’s aspirations and goals for children and in each other’s teaching abilities and we reveal a lack of understanding of the pressures on our colleagues.  When we defer to someone else’s test, we allow that someone else to undermine our professionalism and set the agenda. 

Perhaps that is a large part of the problem: we’ve allowed Government and its agencies to continue setting the agenda for so long that we’ve become divided, it’s become hard to reclaim the agenda for ourselves, we’ve lost the confidence to do so and we’re so busy dancing to someone else’s tune that we don’t have time to compose our own.

The Joy of Learning

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages – about everything I’ve learnt since joining my new school last autumn.  I’ve learnt so much and there’s so much that I’m still learning that there’s going to be more than enough for one blog. 

One of the best things about the career-pause I took and the unexpected decision I made to take my career in a different direction – into the world of special education – has been the opportunity to learn and broaden my horizons.  As a teacher, I’ve always been a learner too, but the intensity of my learning in this new role has been refreshing and exciting.  Pretty much from day one, it was surprising and shocking to me that I apparently knew so little about autism, Asperger’s, other conditions and what it takes to teach children with SEN well.  Suddenly, there were terms like mind-blindness, the triad of impairments, joint attention, PDA and shoebox task that it seemed ought to have some meaning to me but didn’t.

Like any mainstream teacher, every class I’ve ever taught has included children with special educational needs – often a diagnosis of autism or Asperger’s, sometimes a sense on our part that he or she could well be ‘on the spectrum’.  ‘We’re all teachers of SEN’ is a common mantra of mainstream teachers everywhere, and it’s true.  It’s only now though, after fifteen years of teaching, that I realise how inadequately I have fulfilled that role and how poor my training has been.  There comes a point in most of my days when I think of a child I have known in mainstream teaching and wish I knew then what I know now. 

When I think of two particular young people – one boy, one girl – it saddens me that what characterised them most was frustration, anxiety and anger.  More often than not, they were on edge and frequently their anxiety would grow and they would scream, shout, cry, run, pinch, scratch, hit, kick and throw things.  I dread now to think about the state of their emotional well-being.  We talked about the five-point scale and de-escalating anxiety but we didn’t really have the strategies or the resources to achieve it and too often, our responses were reactive and reflected our own frustration (and, for some people, annoyance) rather than being proactive and taking proper account of the antecedents.

The children I teach now get frustrated, anxious and angry too.  They also get excited and it’s sometimes hard to know the difference!  First and foremost, it’s okay for them to feel that way.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we don’t pre-empt whatever it was that made them worried, sometimes things happen beyond our control and sometimes those things happen before they even arrived at school.  Sometimes, we have no option but to pick up the pieces, even if it takes hours, and there’s nothing to be gained from getting frustrated or annoyed ourselves; indeed, it can make matters worse.  All good teachers have patience but teaching children with special needs takes the meaning of patience to a whole new level!  It can mean hours of sitting with a child, doing and saying nothing – just being there for her and usually feeling a little sad too.  It tests your own emotions.  It also takes a special sort of wisdom.  When do you intervene?  When do you say something?  What do you say?  Time it wrong and the child you thought was coming down from that angry, anxious high goes straight back up to it.  I’ve learnt this the hard way: thinking a young man was calm enough to discuss a problem only to find myself pinned against a wall and strangled to the point I couldn’t breathe.

‘Calm down!’  If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a teacher, teaching assistant or headteacher say that to a child …  (If I had a pound for every time I’ve said it myself …)  Now I realise what nonsense it is to simply ask that of someone over whom a thick red mist has descended.  Even if he could hear me (and he probably can’t), he has no idea what I mean or what to do.  Now I say nothing.  If he needs to go outside and run around, that’s fine.  If he needs to kick a football against a wall, that’s fine.  If he needs to sit in a quiet place on his own, that’s fine.  If he needs to draw and colour, that’s fine.  I have a weighted blanket I can offer him, and a squidgy ball he can hold in his hands, and a peanut ball he can sit on or lie under, and thick putty with marbles in for him to manipulate, and a body-sock he can wrap around himself, and much more besides.  What a difference it would have made to that boy and girl in my mainstream school if I and my colleagues had had that understanding and had been able to give them whatever it was they needed to feel better.  They both had one-to-one support so I can’t think of a reason why, when they needed it, they couldn’t have been supported to run around outside, kick a ball, draw and colour or simply find somewhere to be still and quiet.  They didn’t have access to the sensory objects I’ve described, but they ought to have and buying them would be a sensible, worthwhile and – frankly – necessary investment by any school. 

That’s why these children don’t belong in mainstream schools, I’ve been told – special schools can provide for them better and they would do so much better there.  I’m not sure I agree.  They have the right to inclusion alongside their peers and often, they can benefit from the rich curriculum and the social opportunities mainstream schools offer that special schools can’t.  The issue isn’t always theirs; it’s the school’s and how much it is prepared to accept them for who they are, celebrate their personalities and adapt to the children rather than expect the children to adapt to the school. 

Training is an essential investment schools ought to make.  If we accept the notion of inclusion, it should be seen as the right of SEN children to have properly trained staff.  If we expect school staff to support SEN children and confront the challenges that come with that role, it should be seen as their right to be properly trained.  I have the utmost respect and admiration for teaching assistants, but considering the responsibility they often have for some of the most challenging children in our classrooms, their training is dreadfully inadequate.  So, as I have discovered now, is the training of many teachers, and I doubt my experience is any worse than most.  An hour’s INSET here and there throughout a school year will never suffice, not even if it is delivered by the most dedicated and experienced of SENDCOs, and – like telling an enraged autistic child to calm down – endlessly demanding that teachers differentiate is pointless if they don’t really understand the nature of the children they are teaching.

The biggest issue for SEN children in some mainstream schools is the culture of those schools.  I don’t doubt that there are excellent schools with well-trained headteachers and Governors who are properly committed to inclusion and to providing for the needs of their SEN children.  I know there are also headteachers whose understanding is woeful and who lead a culture where SEN children are somehow expected to adapt to everyone else in order to fit in because it’s apparently too hard for the school to adapt to them.

For the best training, everyone working with SEN children should spend a decent amount of time in a school like mine, and we should start with the headteachers.

Resolution 2018 - An Update

Plastic cups!!

Those were the first words I wrote in my notebook when the course I’m attending this week began on Monday.  On each table was a plastic bottle of mineral water and half a dozen throw-away plastic cups.  Why, I wondered angrily, was it not simply water in a jug (maybe with a nice slice of lemon) and paper cups?  Better still, of course, we should all have our own refillable water bottles.  Some do – me included.  (Incidentally, the course has been sufficiently stimulating that I haven't dwelt only on plastic cups all week!)

Such is my heightened awareness of the unnecessary and wasteful use of plastic now.  I’ve been equally incensed by the throw-away plastic cups in the gym at the Hilton Hotel I’m staying at.  They fill a bin by the end of each day.  When I ordered a cocktail at a bar the other evening it came with not one, but two plastic straws.  Really, I don’t even need one!  Likewise, at a friend’s birthday a few weeks back, no-one at the bar was given the option of having a straw in their drink; it was just assumed that everyone would want one.  The irony of this being Turtle Bay – a restaurant named after a marine animal where the food is themed on a famous sea – wasn’t lost on me.  Apparently, in North America and the UK alone, we use and throw away half a billion plastic straws per day.  And most of us don’t need them.  It really isn’t that long since few of us ever used them.

I’ve raised these points with all the organisations concerned, by the way.  It’s one way I’ve started to achieve my new year’s resolution.  One voice may not make a huge difference, but it might get someone thinking and maybe mine isn’t a lone voice.

As resolved, I’ve become much more conscious of my own use of disposable plastic.  One of the first things I did was to give up sparkling mineral water (in plastic bottles) and buy myself that refillable bottle, with one of those cylinders in it that infuses the water with the flavour of whatever fruit I fancy each day.  Who knew water could taste so good?!  I rarely go anywhere without my hessian shopping bags.  I think twice about putting anything in a plastic bag at the supermarket.  Broccoli, carrots, bananas, apples – none of them need bagging.

The thing I am most proud of though is how much the children in my class have taken this issue to their hearts.  We watched some of Blue Planet II and, like me, they were in awe of the splendour of life in the oceans – I think the penguins trying to sneak past slumbering sea-lions was probably the favourite.  They were also horrified by the damage done by plastic pollution – the baby albatross killed after swallowing a plastic toothpick is seared on all our consciences.  Since then, we’ve watched numerous news clips about the issue and explored the facts of it.  I’ve taken them litter-picking on the beach in Bournemouth and we were all appalled by the mountain of litter (almost exclusively plastic) that we collected in just half an hour and over just one hundred metres – three plastic bags full of dog’s mess, a plastic bottle, food wrappers and plastic straws among it.  We’ve visited a local supermarket too to investigate the use of plastic in packaging.  Do flowers really need wrapping in paper and plastic, we wondered.  Why do some greetings cards require a plastic covering while other don’t?  Why do some magazines need wrapping in plastic?  Could fruit, vegetables and bakery products be wrapped in paper or netting instead of plastic bags?  If it’s good enough for mushrooms, why not doughnuts?!

Like me, they’ve started noticing wasteful use of plastic around them; not least at school.  We have a stack of those wretched throw-away plastic cups in our cupboard for when someone needs a drink but I’ve been asked – by the children themselves – to buy them each a re-usable cup that they will take responsibility for themselves.  It will be my pleasure!  After half term, we’ll investigate how many other classes are using disposable cups and share our wisdom.  I like to think they’re on a similar mission at home too!  They’ve asked if we can go litter-picking again – once a month was suggested.  They’re prepared and even eager to give up a play in the park to take responsibility in their community and help protect the local environment.

In English lessons, they have each written a letter to their Member of Parliament, summarising their learning, sharing their feelings and demanding action.  It’s some of the best Literacy teaching I’ve done and I’m very proud of what they’ve written.  They’ve never done anything like this before and they don’t believe I’m actually going to send their letters.  I am, of course, and they’d better get a decent reply!  

A worthy band-wagon to jump on

My New Year's resolution this year was inspired by a good friend from my University days, Nina.  She posted on Facebook that her resolution was to reduce her household plastics consumption.  Over Christmas, I’d discussed this very issue with my parents and uncle and it seemed a no-brainer to follow Nina’s lead and adopt her resolution as my own.

Then I got thinking: Am I just jumping on a band-wagon and is it the right band-wagon to jump on? 

The brilliant ‘Blue Planet 2’ single-handedly raised the profile of the issue of plastic waste for half the country, it seemed.  I was fascinated by the fish with the see-through head, haunted by the ferocious bobbit worms, amazed by the tuna hunting teams of sea-lions and incredulous at the ingenuity of the hide-and-seek octopus, but it was the human pollution of the seas that had the most impact.  Who could not have been moved by the baby dolphin likely poisoned by microplastics, the baby albatross killed by a plastic toothpick and the mother pilot whale cradling her dead calf, possibly poisoned by its own mother’s contaminated milk?  And who could ignore Sir David’s slap across humanity’s wrist?

Since ‘Blue Planet’, I’ve read more about the issue of plastic waste.  The facts are staggering.  Nearly five billion tonnes of plastic waste had accumulated in landfill or the natural environment by 2015.  480 billion drinks bottles were sold globally in 2016 – a million per minute – and each one will take 450 years to biodegrade.  In 2017, the Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100 metres of beach surveyed in the Great British Beach Clean Up, including 225.3 plastic or polystyrene pieces, 42.3 packets, 32.9 caps and lids and 26.9 cotton bud sticks.  Once in the sea, something like a cotton bud is broken down by UV rays, oxidation and the waves, then plastic fragments enter the food chain because fish and marine life can not distinguish them from food.  Then we arrive at the shocking sights shared with us by Sir David and his ‘Blue Planet’ team.  And evidently, the effect on humans of eating contaminated fish is still largely unknown.

It’s not that this isn’t a worthy band-wagon to jump on and Nina’s resolution remains mine also.  What bothers me though is that this isn’t a new issue.  We’ve had some awareness of the problem of plastic for most of my lifetime yet still it is produced and consumed in enormous quantities, we don’t seem to have come far in a search for an alternative, and the amount of waste plastic in the environment still continues to accumulate.  I have great admiration for the ‘Blue Planet’ team for being so successful in raising awareness of this issue and inspiring Nina and me to make our New Year’s resolutions, but I wonder why it took Sir David’s appeals and a BBC programme for us to do something.  Why wasn’t this my resolution ten years ago?  Why wasn’t this a serious enough issue before?  And what other issues are we ignoring because they haven’t yet been the subject of a David Attenborough documentary?

I’m a teacher so I’m bound to reflect on my own role and the part education can play in addressing these sorts of issues.  How is it that even I – with my degree level education and such little interest in celebrity – probably knew more about the latest celebrity gossip than I did about the dire consequences of my own plastic waste?  Why is it that so many people are apathetic toward or even ignorant of issues that it turns out really matter but know all there is to know about bland trivia?  Why for many young people has it become embarrassing and shameful to admit they have knowledge and original thought whilst ignorance has become a badge of honour?

I’m endlessly frustrated by our education system – in more ways than one!  It seems to me that the quality of the education we give children should be judged not just by their test results, the grades they get and the proportions going on to University – as important as all those things are.  We should reflect upon whether or not the children we are teaching are growing up to be independent thinkers, adults who want to know more about their world, seek information and question it, and responsible citizens who seek solutions to real problems and are proactive in improving their world.  Will they be the sorts of adults who will not just flick through the gossip pages of newspapers, magazines and the Internet, but search for news that matters, engage with it, find out more and even act to make a difference?  Will they write meaningful news stories themselves and even make history?  Could they be a future generation of Sir David Attenboroughs?

I’ve decided to make a second New Year’s resolution: To be a better teacher.  I suppose that is something I am always striving to achieve.  Really, it is!  This year though, it has a different meaning and I have a new sense of purpose.  I’m going to tell my class about my New Year’s resolution; we’ll watch some of ‘Blue Planet 2’, discuss pollution and work together to find out more; perhaps we’ll decide there’s something we can do at school to reduce plastic consumption or there are letters to be written to our Member of Parliament or the big supermarkets.  Maybe the children will choose to make their own resolutions or try to reduce the use of plastics in their own homes.

I’m going to try to be more aware of issues in the news too and to share some of them with my class.  We won’t be able to do something about all of them but we’ll talk about them, share our thoughts about what matters to us and at least consider the possibilities.  Hopefully then, they will grow up to be the kinds of adults who take an interest in their wider world, are curious about issues that really matter, want and know how to find out more and feel empowered to pursue change themselves.

Who knows?  Maybe one day, I’ll watch one of them fronting a ground-breaking and inspirational television documentary.

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’.  

Devastated. Beyond words.

Devastated.

Too much?  Too strong?  An over-reaction?

Actually, nowhere near strong enough.  And I couldn't find the words to describe how I felt at 6am this morning.

I haven't been able to find the words all day.  I've even surprised myself by how upset I've been, and I've been trying to work out why that is.

I think of myself as positive and optimistic and I don't think I've ever felt less optimistic.

And I've always been proud to be British.  Now, I don't understand what Britain stands for and I really don't like some of what I think it might stand for.  Suddenly and unexpectedly, I'm disappointed by Britain and I'm ashamed to be British.

All this in twenty-four hours!  It feels like I've been dispossessed of my country and I'm afraid I shall feel this way for the rest of my life.

It's made me incredibly sad.