Interesting how many of my English teaching Facebook friends have posted about doing piles of marking during the holidays. I have an aversion to this particular holiday torture, but despite working double time for the last week of term, I inevitably end up with at least one pile of marking that needs my attention during the break. This time I had two, unfortunately, but I dealt with them by putting my school bag at my bedside and doing a few hours marking on the first Saturday morning of the hols. My thinking was that if I did the work before I got out of bed, it wouldn't impinge on my holiday time. That is, my holiday wouldn't commence until I got out of bed on the Saturday. Mental. But who wouldn't be after thirty years of this?
Our school has also got with the zeitgeist of making the year 12s do their trial exams during the break. The idea is that the dedicated teachers will dash in, tongues hanging out, to collect the exams and get a head start on term 4 by beginning it with all the exams marked. Well, they can stick that up their jacksy.
Or are you one of those teachers who take extra lessons during the school holidays? I was a little that way inclined back in the day. Not now. If I haven't taught the course effectively during term time, with all those classes and all that extra-curricular counselling/tuition that I do, not to mention 24/7 availability on line, I'm evidently not efficient enough. As such, I get a little miffed when inevitably, at briefing at the start of the new term, 'prin class' thanks those 'more dedicated' teachers who gave up their own time to run classes during the vacation.
For me it's been a bit of travelling/cycling and some light holiday reading. Just finished 'Petite Anglaise', an appealing looking true story that I found amongst the remaindered items in a local book store. It's about an expat English womah blogging, famously (and I thought inappropriately) about her life in Paris. Oh to have a personal life to blog about. Clearly, she's not an English teacher.
Actually, it's not that bad. I did manage to steal a little carefully organised leave this year, without inconveniencing my students too much. Spent a blissful five weeks cycling in France.
