Essential reading when missing school

Mixed emotions about my decision to leave teaching, Anxiety levels high. Like a balloon spluttering around the room cos some idiot didn't tie a knot in it. The balloon, not the room. Have had flashes of panic, heart pounding, wondering whether giving up the security of fortnightly pay, routine, students and teachers who've become friends is a huge mistake.

I'm Red in Shawshank Penitentiary. (I've written about The Shawshank Redemption here.) There's a telling shot of Red amongst the gravestones. Andy's already made his great escape. Red's 'an institutional man' at that stage. Thinks he's never going to leave the walls and routine of Shawshank. He's been inside for so long he's perhaps afraid he might fare no better than Brooks Hadlen on the outside. And we all know - if we've seen the film - what happens to Brooks. Red, after the cynical speech that saw him paroled, needs to 'get busy living.'

So do I. Doesn't matter that I could keep teaching; that kids still enjoy being in my classes - well, most of them do. I need to go.

Before I get even more mawkish, this is what I've been doing to hold back the tears as I've packed up my desk and office and done all the final things that you do when you're leaving. As you know, if you're a teacher who's not just paying off a mortgage and actually likes teaching, along with the good there's plenty of bad and loads of hard work.

I've been listing things I won't miss in no particular order.

Marking. I've had a long standing arrangement with Mr Incredible, the work husband, that should I die on the job, he will throw a pile of marking on top of my coffin as I'm descending towards my imminent vaporisatiion. He won't have to do that now.
The letter H pronounced as 'haitch'. Yeah, I know. Common usage. But it's something that makes me cringe. (Me to class: 'Are you 8 aitch?' Them to me: 'It's 8 'haitch'! Oh my god! She said aitch. It's not aitch it's haitch.' Did I mention that year 8s are often sure of their own rightness about everything?)
Incursion used to denote a visitor, or visitors, to the school. Announcement at briefing: 'It's the Medieval Day incursion on Thursday.' What? The Visigoths are attacking? My principal told me to get used to it because everyone in the education department uses it. In my book an incursion will always be  a hostile attack. And yes, I know. English is a changing language or we'd all be speaking Chaucerian. Or grunting.
'Pronounciation'. A colleague - teaches English - argued that this was now acceptable English usage. I think not, sir. I put a sign on my wall for the benefit of language teaching colleagues who had classes in my room. To pronounce is the verb but the noun is pronunciation, not 'pronounciation'. Who knew? Doubt whether anyone read it, given the regular mispronunciation of the word.
'Compliance': Scope and Sequence; Victorian Curriculum (until the powers that be decide to change it again. The one thing you can be sure of: change.) "Visible learning"..."darda" - not data. Guaranteed Viable Curriculum. Documenting 'units' of work that no one ever reads for accountability's sake.
NAPLAN. Oh-oh. Just vomited in my mouth.
'Reading is shit. I don't do reading. Why do I have to read? Reading's boring.' And so on.
'I'm not racist but...' Won't have to facilitate those necessary but ugly class discussions where I'm fighting all the hate fomented in students' homes and by tabloid media.
Morning briefing. An email would suffice.
Sports reports at morning briefings, after which we all dutifully applaud, cos we're 'strayan'. (That's Australian. We apparently love sport.) I've often wanted to say, 'Costa wrote a really good essay on the class text. It wasn't an HD - a haitch D - but he really made an effort. If you see him around the yard give him a pat on the back.' Enthusiastic applause follows.
Meetings. Because meetings. God forbid that anyone should have a spare hour after teaching all day to do some preparation and marking.
'Can I go toilet?' (Only if you say Can I go to the toilet.) And why do they have to say, and act out, 'I'm busting'?
Can I have a tissue? Don't get me started on the snotting and hawking.
Can I get a drink?
You didn't tell me I had to do it. The passive aggressive whine of the kid who hasn't done its assessment task.
You said it was due tomorrow. 'Didn't she?' 'Yeah, she did.' Strength in numbers. All agree that it was due tomorrow, except for the eight kids who did it by its due date.
You failed me. It's all my fault.
I'm telling my mother/father. Ooh, I'm scared.
PDPs. Professional development plans.
Pending Ns, for kids who haven't completed work requirements and therefore risk being Not Satisfactory.
Phone calls to parents of kids receiving Pending Ns
Parent teacher interviews. Hoo-freaking-ray.
Professional Learning Teams.
Daily form assembly. Unnecessary.
Weekly Whole School Assembly. Power trip. And get a new version of the national anthem.
Delinquent disruptive kids from damaging families.
Whole school approach to discipline. The 'token economy' where you have to pay kids for doing the right thing. Documenting how many tokens you've issued so middle management can gather 'darda' to prove - pretend - it's working.
Uniform checking.
Kids barging through me. In the yard. In doorways.

I could go on but that will do. If I get depressed next year, missing teaching, I'll read the list.

Trial separation.

Notice how I haven't been blogging much about school lately? It's because I'm caught in a loop. Same shit, different day. So after 37 years, I've decided I need a trial separation. 

I've been agonising over this for months. In fact, it's the hardest decision I've ever made in my life. Getting evicted from 'our place' at school probably gave me the shove I needed.  So too did turning sixty. When you get there, dear reader, remember this: you still feel the same inside but everything around you makes you conscious of your age and time running out. Especially having a couple of dads die – mine and my husband's -  and a couple of eighty-something demented mums in aged care.  

Ah, normal vicissitudes notwithstanding I've had everything I've wanted in my teaching career. But it's really hard to give up something for which you intuitively prepared throughout your childhood. I liked the whole idea of teaching from the minute I became a student. Not a student teacher, a kid at school. School felt comfortable. I must have had some good teachers. Some weren't, but that's another story. 

A week ago, after much deliberation and an emotional pain in the core of my being - drama queen? - I called my principal and asked whether I could see him the next day regarding taking twelve months leave. After I made that call, I stood outside the green grocers in the local shopping centre hyperventilating. Because until I suddenly made the decision to make that call I had no idea I was going to leave.  

Despite having largely relished my teaching career, I'm generally under-stimulated by teaching year 8 and 9 students. Careful what you wish for. Back in 2011, I wanted an easier life – less responsibility and less marking. Thus I went part-time, relinquished English coordination – a role I was enjoying 'at the governor's pleasure' - and gave up teaching my regular allotment of two year 12 VCE classes. It was a great relief to reduce my full-time load to three days.  

Back to those year 8 and 9 students. I'm assuming you're all teachers reading this so you know how challenging class management can be at this level. Yes, I really like most of the students I teach but I teach about ten students over my three classes who are very difficult to manage. Of course they all have their own back story and we work with that as we try to educate. But really. Sheesh.  

Many middle school kids, even those without difficult home lives, are hard work. They are wrestling with hormones and drives they've never experienced before. They're emotionally charged, histrionic and will argue that black is white. (If they read that last line I'd be accused of being racist. I kid you not.) They argue and bicker amongst themselves and their allegiances are constantly shifting. Suddenly, almost overnight, they are sure they know everything, much more than any adult, particularly one of my gender and age. It is incredibly difficult  to educate these kids. But we do it, year after year. And when it's working – as it has been every day with one of my year 8 groups this year, it's magic. 

Then there are those adversarial -'oppositional defiant' - students. Usually it's girls in my classes. They're always there waiting to pounce on any perceived transgression. They can be downright rude, and when they gang up, holy mama, it takes all my wiles to ameliorate the situation. (I'm not bad at this. I can make them feel like I'm issuing a detention because I love them so much! You know the line: I care about you too much to let you think that your behaviour is in any way acceptable, and words to that effect.) One rude, bold student who's 'not afraid to express her opinion because she's going to be a lawyer and earn lots of money', can instantly destroy the learning of an entire class – sometimes for the rest of the year if it's not skilfully managed. (Ah, memories.) If one loses patience with this type of student, one is fucked. They can, and will do or say anything but one must keep calm and follow one's management plan, but by god they push the buttons. Some of them will grow out of this behaviour but some of these students will just grow into older ignoramuses, constantly convinced of their entitlement to their own opinion, loudly voiced, no matter how self-absorbed and ill-informed they are. You know the type. 

There's a lot of anxiety in a teacher's life, isn't there? You're constantly on stage and expected to perform. You're judged to within an inch of your existence. Anyone else have anxiety dreams at the start of a new term? You know the one. You're totally unprepared and you get caught out. Or is that just me? One of my recurring dreams involved variations on a scenario where Mr Incredible and I have been evicted from our classrooms and office. I've dreamt that our area has been trashed, bulldozed and reconfigured in some unsuitable way. Meanwhile I'm floundering around the campus facing the impossible goblin's riddle of trying to find my way home to my class, but my home is gone. 

Well, in real life on the last day of last term, my nightmare having eventuated, I'd packed my car with my swivel chair and boxes of stuff I thought I couldn't manage without. It was pouring rain and I was alone unpacking my car at 5pm, trying to make my new office – no heating or cooling but more space – look less bleak. There was something premonitory about it.  

First day of the new term, I didn't know where my period 1 class would meet. My nightmare again. Turns out my new classroom for six periods a week would be a windowless converted former locker bay. My challenging year 8s, in a classroom situated in what we call Siberia, went ape-shit in their new room with its different seating arrangement. One day I puzzled over the unusual absenteeism, marked the roll, wrote my goal – don't get me started – on the board, got twenty minutes into the lesson before about ten kids emerged bright eyed with hilarity from a back office where they'd secreted themselves.  (Everyone's a winner: I enjoyed the twenty minutes without them.)

But we all got used to it and life went on. On the up side, I probably walk an extra k a day getting around the campus. On top of my cycling commute to and from school that's a good work out. 

Now when I'm up at briefing in the main staffroom, I look out through the windows at my fenced off, former haven standing forlornly amidst the rubble incurred during a major school renovation. My nightmare realised. Having coped with that change I'm hoping I'll cope even more easily with a trial separation from teaching. 

I'm interested to find out who I will be if I'm not a teacher.