Work is busy so sorry my blogposts have been a bit thin on the ground recently. Nowadays in education, computers and Excel spreadsheets fuel rigorous post mortems about targets and patterns of achievement. Especially in schools which serve deprived catchment areas. The battle is always on to make silk purses out of sows' ears. In the shadows, experts hover - inspectors and advisers, consultants and lead professionals - people who don't teach but form self-important expressions on their faces - passing judgement like priests in confessionals. Long gone are those summers when you would peruse the results lists and think - well they got what they deserved now let's move on. Talk about The Spanish Inquisition - that''s nothing compared with the grilling that schools in challenging areas suffer when results appear to dip. Frankly, I'm sick of it. I want out. Perhaps the end of this academic year. Get a few more pounds in the old retirement warchest. In the meantime here are two snaps from our holidays in Goa and Turkey - to remind me as much as you that there's more to life than work:-
Old man in the market in Anjuna
Shirley in the doorway of the high church in Kayakoy.
Interesting pix from your travels! Sorry to hear you're experiencing so much red tape in the education field.
ReplyDeleteFinish at the end of the year and go on the supply list - you should have some control over which jobs you accept/reject and it's a chance to teach without all the red tape, paperwork, angst that normally goes with it. At least, that's what happens in the primary sector (although HLTs are creeping in a lot over here now.) Good luck with whatever you decide but, as you say, there's more to life than work.
ReplyDeleteI did quite a bit of supply teaching - in a very deprived school nearly twenty years ago! Only drawback was that they swapped all the classes round to give me the most difficult ones all the time, grrrr. Still, I got good at lion-taming.
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