For a teacher the first day or few days in September have a feel of New Year’s Eve about them. I mean I can’t be the only one who does that first week drunk, can I? Just kidding. Five pints before breakfast isn’t nearly enough to get me drunk…
But no, I really am just kidding (that definitive is for any SLT members reading as previous experience tells me they can lack any kind of sense of humour). What I mean there though is that we’re all probably full of resolutions or more accurately, good intentions about the academic year ahead.
It was one of my colleagues who inadvertently reminded me of this just a few weeks back. He’d had an idea about an adjustment to make to our whole class feedback sheet and when he told me I just thought, ‘ooh, that’s clever’. It involved using our visualisers to add to the feedback we give and I immediately thought that I’d have to use that with other groups too.
Later, when I gave it some thought though I realised that I while this was a good intention, I knew that all too soon I’d tire of untangling my visualiser and getting it set up. I mean the whole thing usually ends with me trying to stop a great big image of my face being on the board, wrestling with the visualiser and trying to make sure it’s focused on the work. And can I keep my piece of paper straight while I write? Of course not!
This extends to my use of mini whiteboards too. This has become a whole school focus and while I’ve used mine a bit, I’ve also lost count of the times I’ve gotten midway through a lesson and thought, ‘I could’ve used my whiteboards for that’. And I honestly can’t see this changing! The intention is there but will it overpower the feeling of constantly being knackered and the immense desire to just get through the day? I doubt it.
My desk has been a pet project every year for the last 26 years. Best described as a jungle made of paper and plastic, it’s one of those desks where it’s made up of the essentials – laptop, screen, stationary etc – and then just three loose piles of documents and ‘stuff’. And yes, I am someone who’ll tell you I know where everything is! The point is though, it could be so much tidier and every year I swear that it will be, but having started with it almost empty in the first week of September, it’s now got the look of mid July and we’re only at the start of November! Again, good intentions…
And there’s more. Every year, I buy things to help my teaching. Last year it was a wall planner; a whiteboard type affair with board markers to plan my week with. I never got it out of the packaging and it’s still in the cupboard waiting to be planned with. This year I bought various pens, pencils and other items of stationary, like a new Year 7 with his brand new pencil case chock full and ready to go. The only difference is that the Year 7 kid will use his stuff. Me? If I glance over the right hand side of my chair it’s there, on the floor in an Asda bag!
We’ve just started the second half term of the year. It started full of good intentions. It looks like it’s going to end with me firmly entrenched in the same bad habits I’ve lived with for over two decades!
