Friday 8 January 2010

Snow days

Lucky me, three days of school, bliss!! Can't tell you what a relief it has been not to have to go to school. Yet still I have a sense of impending doom because more than likely I will have to go to school on Monday.
The Standardisation was good, I chatted with some of the other teachers who were there and it was so good to talk to them. I told them how stressed I have been about my GCSE and A level classes, worrying about getting them a C or above, and they were so sympathetic it was lovely. I felt like I wasn't alone, a lot of them said that they were not in it because they wanted to be teachers, but because they wanted to be artists but needed the money. This rang so true with me and made me realise why I sometimes find it so hard to work with my Head of Department. She didn't come from a Fine art Background like so many of us art teachers did, she came from a Fashion background. She actually wanted to be a teacher, and not just for the subject but for the teaching. This is the total opposite to me, I went into teaching because I love art not because I love teaching. Its a very difficult situation. I have talked about this to me Head of Department because but she didn't understand at all and I just ended up making myself look lazy. But my frame of mind is work to live not live to work. I don't think she would agree with this.
When I was talking to the ladies at the Standardisation meeting they were so sympathetic at one moment I thought I was going to cry. I went all red and had to stop talking. They really were lovely and reminded me of the good side of teaching which is the holidays. They all said that they lived for the holidays. This was all so refreshing. At my school I feel like I am the only one who feels like this and that I am such a bad person for it.
Anyway today I had a phone call from my Head of Department, she was very cross because in one of my year 10 classes only 3 pupils were signed up to go on the art trip. She said that I should have been chasing them. I said that I had been reminding them in their lessons and that I didn't know why they were not going. She said that I should know why they are not going and that she needs to be able to rely on her staff. She wanted me to go into school which would be over an hours walk just so that I could phone parents. I asked her to email me the numbers. I would walk this far if I had to teach but not just to sit on the phone. She also said that she would now have to cancel one of the coaches because not enough pupils were going and the department would have to incur the cost.
I felt really awful after getting off the phone to her, really upset, like I was a totally useless person. I felt she wanted me to say sorry but I didn't feel like I had anything to be sorry for. Thinking back I didn't even see that class on the last week on term, and had missed a lot of lessons with them in the past due to sickness and meetings so it is no wonder I haven't been able to chase them that much.
I chatted to my husband about it after and he said that she should have been more organised and she should not have left it till the Friday before the trip (trip is on Tuesday) to find out who was going. He also said she should have checked before the holidays so that she could have cancelled the coach in good time.
I didn't feel much better after this though, just miserable and like I wanted to leave.
Can't leave though so I am stuck doing this for the next two years or however long it is before I can have a baby and get out of it.
The fact that I was at school till 6.00 working hard on Monday goes to show how much I had to do and how it is absolutely impossible to get everything done in the time given. It's truly ridiculous. There is always something else to be done and I never seem to be doing a good job because there is always something I haven't done or have forgotten. Its totally unrewarding because I never get thanked for anything. Not that I am doing it for the thanks, but just to have a day go by and know that I have done all my work and everything to my best ability would be lovely. Not to go home with a load of unfinished work and knowing that I didn't do my best job because I had to do a half job on everything to get it all done.

Well that's the rant over with. I just hope I can muster up the enthusiasm to perform some half decent lessons on Monday.

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