It’s started. After almost 6 weeks of a summer holiday, this English teacher is already getting ‘The Fear’. Even though September sees me begin my 27th year of teaching, going back never gets any easier. ‘The Fear’ is always there, whether it’s simple Sunday afternoon fear or the end of a break fear.
I’m not back until Tuesday – hallelujah for the Bank Holiday – and yet I woke up on Saturday right out of a ‘going back nightmare’. I’d love to say that I sat bolt upright in bed and let out a scream, like I was in some wacky Hollywood comedy, but I didn’t. Instead, I opened my eyes to the usual middle aged joint pain followed by a terrible realisation about the nightmare I’d been having. As with any morning I also let out a few whispered expletives, all of them featuring the ‘f’ word.
Teaching nightmares are par for the course when you’re about to head back to it. Last night’s was really quite bizarre and not the usual ‘they’re not listening’ type of thing. Instead, I’d been assigned to a desert school on some sort of compound. There were kids everywhere and also scorpions and snakes; lots of snakes. I’m not even that sure you get too many snakes in the desert. But this was never going to be true to life, brought on as it was by the anxiety of going back to work.
The snakes weren’t the worst of it though. King Charles and our previous queen, Elizabeth II, were my teaching assistants and boy did old Liz have a sailor’s mouth on her! Furthermore, when I went to the toilet – outside, of course, – every time I went to wee it set off a nearby sprinkler which gave me wet shoes and trousers. Not a look to take back to your classroom!
All this because it’s time to go back to work. But, of course, fellow teachers and those who work in education will know all about ‘The Fear’.
‘The Fear’ will no doubt continue even when I go back because on Tuesday we have the dreaded inset day where everyone and their mum’s that’s associated with any trust schools turn up to share a day of learning. It’s easily my worst day of the year, every year. I remember times when we just went back and more or less got the day to ourselves to get prepared. Common sense, right? One year, I sat working and completely forgot that I should have been in the hall listening to results feedback. When I realised I set off to the hall but swiftly turned around when I thought about how stupid I’d look and how dull it would be. No one said a thing.
At a previous school the CEO of the whole trust used to give a speech at the start of each day. These were inevitably, and for all the wrong reasons, the funniest thing I’d hear all year too. In my first year there he told us about the trust’s ‘no dickheads’ policy. I cannot, dear reader, underestimate the irony in said policy not least because they employed me, but mainly because of this particular CEO. Then, the next year he tried to convince us all that he’d been a ‘bad boy’ at school and that as a result he was indeed a local success story. Suffice to say that I’m still awaiting the medal I deserved for keeping a straight face that day.
Nowadays schools do stuff like get you to attend little seminars in the morning before you then spend the afternoon all together listening to far too many people attempt to bore you to sleep. Or something like that. So it might be anything from classroom management tips or a foot fungus clinic right through to some bright young thing trying to bring back class pets or just Abba pilates – and that’s just me throwing two words together to make a thing, but someone somewhere is thinking about which member of Abba they’d be. Honestly, it’s a nightmare. And then after the inevitably disappointing lunch suddenly someone’s bounding on stage to inspire you for the last few hours of the day. I don’t want to sound ungrateful – although I clearly am – but you know what would inspire me? An early finish or a day in my classroom.
Ah yes, my classroom. More fear. Our school has been renovating our corridor over summer. And I’ve been here before. In education it feels like nothing ever gets finished on time, so I’m preparing myself to not be too perturbed when I walk in and my classroom has no floor or something. All of my stuff is either in other classrooms or in long term storage and I am genuinely envisaging walking into my room to find absolutely nothing there! I’ve spent years coveting bloody glue sticks as well, so if they’re lost then I fear I’ll turn into Michael Douglas in Falling Down!
So, as well as worrying about whether I can still actually teach, I’m also worried about whether my classroom has all its walls, if I have a desk or even if it’s just a case of all my stuff has been brought back and dumped. I mean half a day to get everything put back in the right place is going to be quite the challenge.
As we all know though, within a couple of weeks these pre-term worries will be old news as learners have a funny little way of disrupting everything you’ve put in place with just a few words or actions. So what will be the new ‘6 7’? I mean it’ll have to go some to beat that particular work of genius. And will every student in every class still have their minds blown because I’ve had either a shave or a haircut? I wouldn’t care but it’s the same haircut every time and still it’s “Fresh trim, sir?” or even more strangely, “Who’s your barber, sir?” like they might just know him. And now, because of course young people invented hair cuts, I even get some asking if they could cut my hair! Who knew that barbering could become such an aspiration as well as yet another way to disrupt a lesson?
Whatever your role, wherever your school and whatever your cohort looks like’The Fear’ takes many forms and if you’re in education you’ll no doubt have lots of your own. One thing’s for sure though; however many nightmares you have and however cringeworthy your inset day might get, the first day of another new academic year is right around the corner. Cheer up though, it’ll soon be Christmas…
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